


Fragments

by Rizandace



Series: Magic Curses [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, It gets dark, M/M, Multi, Sequel to Lover's Touch, but i promise a happy ending for everyone, but lots of discussions of major character death, not major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-08 23:30:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18904870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizandace/pseuds/Rizandace
Summary: "Yeah," Quentin said, his voice strangled. "My worst nightmare. That tracks."There was a long pause. "Who would want to fuck with you like that?" Josh asked. "You're... Quentin.""You'd be surprised," Eliot said, teeth gritted. He was remembering another curse, one that attacked not Quentin's mind but his body, leaving him weak, dying, a year and a half before. He'd nearly lost him then, and he wasn't keen on repeating the experience."Apparently I just have one of those curse-able faces," Quentin said, shrugging. It was said like a joke, but his eyes were still anguished.----Quentin Coldwater is not losing his mind. Probably. Maybe. Or if he is, it's definitely magic's fault.Q is forced to watch his worst nightmare unfold right in front of him, and it's up to him, Eliot, and their friends to figure out why.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to "Lover's Touch", but if you don't feel like reading that first, you should be fine - all you need to know is that canon happened basically the same, except Q didn't die at the end of season 4. From there, through some magical shenanigans, Q and Eliot talked out all their crap and got back together. They live in Fillory now, with Margo and Fen as high King and Queen. This takes place about 1.5 years after "Lover's Touch," which puts it about 2.5 years after the events of season 4.
> 
> I would like to emphasize that this piece gets pretty dark, but it does NOT contain major character death and it WILL have a happy ending. That said, there's some heavy, heavy angst in this, and Q goes to some pretty dark places along the way. If that's not your thing, please be cautious.

**QUENTIN**

It was a perfectly normal morning in Fillory. Which, honestly, should have been Quentin's first warning that things were about to go very, very wrong. Fillory was many things, but  _normal_ was not one of them: Q had gotten used to being woken up by harried castle employees, alerting him to one catastrophe or another. The Serpent War had ended months ago, but the paperwork was still pouring in like it had never stopped. His official role in the government wasn't supposed to have anything to do with the war efforts, but it had been an all-hands-on-deck situation for the last year or so.

That was over now, though, and the number of mornings where he was allowed to wake up under his own power, relaxed and warm, was starting to increase. He and Eliot hadn't moved at all in their sleep - Q was still curled up next to him, head on Eliot's chest, the way they had been when they'd drifted off the night before. Neither of them had anywhere to be - there was a meeting later in the morning with a delegation of fresh-water mermaids that Q was rather looking forward to, having never met a mermaid, but at this exact moment, he was content to stay just where he was, wrapped in Eliot's arms, luxuriant in silk sheets.

"Mmm good morning," Eliot said when Q shifted slightly, stretching himself awake.

"Hey," Q said. "Do you know what today is?"

Eliot rolled his neck languorously, looking over at Q with narrowed eyes. "It's not our anniversary - the Earth one  _or_  the Fillory one..."

Q grinned, happy in a way that felt momentous, and twisted his head to place a kiss to Eliot's chest. "No, it's not, but you're actually not far off."

Eliot thought about it for a moment, running his fingers through Q's hair. He did that all the time, and Q was convinced he was hardly aware of it. "Shit, Quentin - the day we met?"

Quentin's smile got impossibly bigger, and he shifted up so he was resting on his elbow, looking down at Eliot. He nodded. "Good boy."

Eliot laughed. "God, I had such a  _crush_  on you."

"You did not!" Q said. "You just wanted to corrupt me."

"That was the same thing for me, back then."

"Well, I was smitten, too, you know," Q said.

" _Yeah_ , you seemed  _super_ smitten," Eliot said, rolling his eyes. They were wading into territory that had at one point been dangerous for them, but in the last year and a half together in Fillory, all of the hard edges of insecurity and jealousy had been sanded away.

"I  _was_ ," Q insisted. "You were so... glamorous. I was obsessed with what you thought of me."

"You  _were_  pretty adorable, seeking approval, trying to keep up with me and Bambi."

"Adorable's my middle name."

"Your middle name is  _Makepeace_ , which is maybe the least adorable - ow." Q had jabbed him in the stomach with an elbow, and then scooted down in the bed so he could kiss it better.

Eliot, in retaliation, gripped a hand in Q's hair and then pushed him, completely without subtlety, a little lower, guiding Q to exactly where he was wanted.

Quentin didn't object.

* * *

Margo was already in the counsel chambers when Q and Eliot showed up. She was pouring over notes, jabbing at a page with quick, angry slashes of her pen. Fen, Josh, Tick, Rafe, and several other advisers were present as well, all very carefully avoiding each other's eyes.

"Good morning, my darling Bambi," Eliot said, ignoring the icy atmosphere of the room. Margo's eyes snapped up to lock onto him, and Q took an instinctive step away from Eliot, out of the danger zone.

"Too busy getting your dick sucked to show up early and  _help me_?" she accused. And, well. Q couldn't stop his face from heating up, and really hoped Margo wasn't about to turn on him as well. After all, Eliot was a considerate lover, one who never left his partner in need...

"You said everything was ready to go," Eliot said, raising an eyebrow in question at Fen, who shrugged a little helplessly behind Margo's back. "What's got your panties in a twist?"

"They're sending their  _princess_ ," Margo wailed, some of her anger transforming into recognizable nerves. "Everything has to be perfect for them! The hot-springs won't even stay at the proper temperature."

Q looked over to the side of the room, where a rocky pool had been built (with a healthy dose of magic to assist). It was filled with lightly bubbling warm water for the use of their guests, who had yet to arrive.

"Bambi, deep breaths," Eliot was saying. He'd clearly decided to weather the storm, walking straight towards Margo and placing his hands on her arms, rubbing gently. "We've prepared, we've got everything all worked out. It's a  _good_  sign that they're sending royalty, right? It means they're taking this as seriously as we are."

"But what if they - "

"High King Margo, High Queen Fen, most honorable lords!" a voice interrupted. A few palace guards were opening the doors to the counsel chambers, and behind them came a group of Fillorian diplomats, the ones who had been emissaries to the river mermaids over the last few months. In between them they carried a strange litter, two poles holding up what looked kind of like a reinforced plastic bag, and inside the bag, two mermaids, their tails visibly swishing in the water contained in the clear plastic.

Q watched as the humans walked the mermaids over to the man-made hot-springs and gracefully assisted the mermaids into the water. Margo led the way in extending warm welcomes, rushing over to the springs and kissing the proffered hands of the Princess Glissanda and the Lady Aria, two of the most strangely beautiful women that Quentin had ever seen in his life. Even Eliot seemed a little star-struck, bowing low over their hands when it was his turn to say hello. The assorted Fillorians gathered around and took their seats in a half-circle facing the pool, so the two mermaids formed one side. The formalities done with, the negotiations promptly began.

Q's role was mostly to stay silent and listen, keeping careful notes along with several other Fillorian officials. The main conflict was about access to the river. Certain trade routes required use of the river systems in Fillory, but disrupted the natural habitats of the mermaid tribes. The problem had only been exacerbated during wartime, but now that peace had been established, a more mutually beneficial relationship with the merfolk was being sought.

There were tensions, though, mostly on the part of Princess Glissanda and Lady Aria. They were defensive and looking for reasons to be offended, and unfortunately the Fillorian nobility gave them a few.

There had been the food incident, first of all. Josh had prepared meals specifically to impress their guests, but evidently he'd chosen an ingredient in one of the appetizers that merfolk were uniformly unable to digest. Luckily, their guests noticed it before taking their first bites, but it had put a bit of an awkward strain on the moment. Margo had given Josh a look that froze the blood in Quentin's veins, and he wasn't even the intended target. Josh was a braver man than he.

There had also been an unfortunate moment where Quentin, after having successfully offered a suggestion about reparations for an area of the river that had been polluted by a supply vessel running aground, had tried to offer his sympathies to the princess for the loss of her lover during the accident. Evidently it was something of a taboo for an outsider to speak of the dead without express permission, and at Quentin's words, Glissanda had glared daggers at him and hissed "you have not the right to speak of such things until you have experienced its equivalent." Quentin had had the odd urge to compare tragic backstories and prove himself worthy to speak of pain, but a vein in Margo's forehead had started twitching, so he'd let it go.

Also, High Queen Fen was crushing hard on Lady Aria, and Margo and Josh, who both seemed completely and totally content to share Fen with each other, clearly had a jealous streak when it came to other people. Eliot had had to step on Margo's foot more than once to stop her from making snide comments about the Lady's attentions toward the High Queen.

By the time the mermaids were being escorted out of the chambers to be returned to an outdoor pond to rest for the remainder of the day, Q was ready to call the first day of negotiations a "qualified success."

To his surprise, Margo seemed to agree. "Coulda gone better," she said with a shrug, when Josh raised an eyebrow at her. "But nobody yelled or cried, and they're going to come talk to us again tomorrow."

"I had a thought," Quentin said. "About their customs, surrounding grief - obviously I stuck my foot in it, and - "

"That wasn't your fault," Eliot said, sounding a little sharp. "She had no right to question your capacity for pain. God knows, if anyone understands..."

Q smiled at him, and reached a hand up to brush against the side of his face. "I'm okay. And maybe it wasn't my fault, but that doesn't mean we should ignore the incident. I think I remember seeing something when I was doing my research. Maybe I'll run to the library for a couple of hours, see what I can find out before tomorrow?"

There were general nods of agreement, as the group splintered off to fulfill their duties for the day.

"Josh is experimenting in the kitchen again," Margo told Q, as he got up to leave the counsel chambers. "When you're done nerding out in the library, meet us there."

Q huffed at that - "Nerding out? Really, Margo? You were freaking out about this two hours ago."

"Bambi, don't tease him, he's sensitive," Eliot said. He looped an arm around Q, pulling him into his side. "I mean, we all  _know_  he's a super-nerd, but it's impolite to point it out except for on very special occasions."

Q had wrapped an arm around Eliot's waist on pure instinct, but now he twisted his hand, jabbing hard into Eliot's side. Eliot yelped, squirming away, but Q gripped him tight and tilted his head up for a kiss, which Eliot gave him, smiling into it. "Behave yourself, my little nerd king."

"Since when do you want me to behave myself?" Q reached down to pinch Eliot's ass, and then spun out of his arms and began walking away before he could be subjected to Eliot's retaliation.

As Q left the chamber, he heard Margo's voice, exasperated but fond: "How long is this honeymoon period going to  _last_?"

"As long as I can get away with," Eliot replied, and Q tried to hide his grin as he left the room and headed towards the library.

* * *

It had been something of Quentin's pet project, to revitalize the library. The dust had been cleared away from most of the books, and there were a couple of scribes updating the ledgers at the front desk when he wandered in. Q gave them a nod, blushing when they both shot to their feet and bowed to him. He was never going to get used to that.

Books on mermaids would be located towards the back, Quentin remembered from an earlier audit of the space. He made his way there, deep into the bowels of the library, far away from any living soul. Despite Margo and El's teasing, he really  _was_  excited to spend a couple of uninterrupted hours alone with books, learning something new about Fillory. He'd lived here in this castle for more a year now, and yet he still woke up most mornings in a state of incredulous joy at how his life was turning out.

He turned the corner, and -

Froze.

There was a figure slumped on the floor up against one of the bookshelves, a figure more familiar to Q than his own.

Eliot.

Eliot and - blood. So much -

Oh God.

Oh God no no no. Eliot looked  _dead_ , with a widening pool of crimson staining his clothes and the carpeted floor beneath him. His eyes were shut, mouth slack - was he breathing?

Yes, he was, he was - oh  _fuck_ , Quentin felt like he was unraveling, like his own innards were spilling out of him - he stumbled forward and down onto his knees. Where was the blood coming from, how -  _how_  - Eliot's skin was paper-white and covered in a fine sheen of sweat, but there was a wheezing sound coming from his chest - he was breathing, he was  _alive_  that meant they could fix this. He had to  _fix_  this. Q reached a hand forward and touched Eliot's brow, feeling the world start to shake apart around him.

Eliot's eyes snapped open. Dazed. Pained. " _Q_ ," he gasped. "Quentin - what - "

"What the fuck happened?" Q asked, but couldn't focus enough to listen for an answer. His hands were trembling so hard he could hardly perform the formations, but he pushed through it, starting with a couple of basic healing spells that he already knew would be useless before they even started.

"I don't - I don't know," Eliot said, sounding slightly more lucid. "I wasn't - I..." he trailed off as Q worked over him, and then spoke again, his voice suddenly, horribly, gentle. "Q, look at me. Please."

"No," Quentin snarled, repeating the tuts and feeling magic flow out of him and into Eliot's ravaged body. "Don't."

"Q, please, baby,  _look_  at me."

His voice sounded - he sounded so  _weak_ , so fragile, and Q was powerless to deny him. He looked up, met Eliot's eyes and saw resignation there, mixed with a terrible, terrible grief. "Quentin, I need you to promise me that - "

"Shut  _up_!" Q yelled, and the sound was loud in the echoing of the library. It shocked something loose inside of him, and he suddenly realized he hadn't called for assistance, he hadn't done  _anything_  that could actually  _help_ , he was  _useless_  - he jumped to his feet and made to move away, to find someone who could -

Eliot's hand twitched and grabbed at Q's ankle before he could take a step. "Q, please don't leave me."

That wasn't fucking fair.

Q legs buckled in automatic, instinctive obedience to the sound of Eliot's voice. He stared at Eliot, forced himself to look, to see it all. He reached a hand forward and felt for his stomach, finding what he knew he would find - a gaping abdominal wound, Eliot's blood seeping out of it, taking him away -  _killing_  him,  _EliotEliotEliot nonononono._

"I love you," Eliot said, his tone quiet. Peaceful. Ending. The rattling sound of his breathing jerked and shuddered, and Q - Q felt - incinerated from the inside out. "You're strong, Q. You're so brave. You'll be okay." Eliot's eyes fluttered closed, his head slumped to the side. 

" _No_ , no I won't - I  _can't_  - Eliot -  _El_ , I - "

But Eliot wasn't answering. Eliot couldn't answer. Because Eliot was dead.

* * *

 He wasn't sure how long he sat there, his head pressed in to Eliot's shoulder, his breathing sounding harsh and animal and broken in his own ears, before something occurred to him.

It wasn't possible. He'd left Eliot alive and well in the counsel chambers, and he'd come straight here. How could Eliot have been in the library already?

Quentin lifted his head from the still-warm body, staring down into Eliot's open, unseeing eyes, and then lurched to his feet, stumbling away from the gruesome scene. He couldn't keep his feet under him, his legs kept almost buckling and he had to use the edges of bookshelves for support. He probably looked drunk, stumbling around like that, but he didn't  _feel_  drunk. He felt lucid. More-so than was normal. Everything was hyper-real around him, the press of the shelf into his palm, the give of the carpet under his shoes, the discordant gasping sound he knew was coming from his own throat but that he couldn't stop even if he'd had the energy to try.

His heart wasn't broken; it wasn't shattered. It was  _gone_ , extricated from him by a blunt instrument, scraped from the inside of his chest and leaving behind a void, a black hole of nothing, an echo of  _EliotEliotEliotEliot_  reverberating inside the emptiness.

His brain, on the other hand - his stupid, broken, brain... it was already making plans. He had to die. He had to make it stop, he had to make  _himself_  stop, he had to get to Eliot. Had to join him. Had to do it soon because living. Life. Breath. All of it. Was absurd. Impossible. A  _mistake_.

He'd already lostthis, he'd already lived through this. He'd done it as an old man, had forced himself through the days and weeks without Eliot because he'd had a family and he'd been sure it wouldn't take long for nature to run its course anyway, but  _this_. This was unbelievably unjust. He couldn't be expected to live through the rest of a natural life, not like this. Nobody would expect it of him, it was torture - they'd understand,  _Margo,_ at least, would get it -

Margo. Her name was a bright spot inside of him, a flair of pain that pulled him out of his thought spiral and kept him moving forward. He stumbled out of the library, ignoring the shouts of alarm from the scribes near the entrance. The scribes - they would find Eliot's body, they'd raise a general cry, so - so he had to get to Margo, because she had to hear it first. She was sitting there, probably still in the counsel chambers going over notes with Tick and some of the other advisers, trying to smooth over the ruffled feathers from that morning's meeting. She didn't know yet, that her heart had just been broken. Q was going to have to tell her. He'd tell her, because Eliot would want him to. Eliot would want that, and then Margo could take over. She could figure out how to care about things, how to tell Fen, how to track down whoever had done this to Eliot.

That was a new thought, strong enough to pierce the hollowness inside him - someone had killed Eliot. Someone had  _murdered_ him in his own castle. Should Q feel angry? Should he want revenge? He wasn't sure. There wasn't room left inside of him to feel anything at all. No, Margo could feel angry. Margo could avenge him. Q was going to get to her, and then he was going to die. Step one, step two. He could manage that. He thought he could probably survive existence for at least that long.

He passed by a couple of servants in the hall. They stopped in their tracks to gape at him, and he wondered vaguely what he looked like. A quick glance told him that he somehow wasn't covered in blood, which was - a good thing. Not that it mattered. Nothing -  _nothing_  mattered now.

He practically fell against the door to the counsel chamber, calling out as he did so. " _Margo_." Her name sounded alien in his mouth. Was that the first word he'd set aloud since Eliot had died? Because Eliot had  _died_. Quentin was living in the world, he was breathing and moving but Eliot was  _dead_  and...

"Holy  _shit,_ Q, are you okay?"

Margo sounded truly alarmed as she took in the sight of Q, practically falling into the room. He could only imagine what sort of expression he had on his face. Margo jumped to her feet, and from the seats on either side of her, so did Tick, and so did -

So did -

_What the fuck_.

Q felt his heart reappear abruptly in his chest again. It was beating so fast it made him feel physically ill.

"Q? Fuck, what's wrong?" Eliot said, rushing around the table towards him. He was there. He was whole, and upright, and breathing and his blood was inside him where it belonged.

_EliotEliotEliot_ _._

The second Eliot's hands touched his shoulders, Q felt something hot and vital jerk back to life inside of him. It  _hurt_. He flinched back, trying to process, trying to reconcile this living, breathing, beautiful person in front of him with the lifeless body he'd just left behind.

"No," he said. "No, you - I saw - I felt you - "

Eliot frowned at Q's flinch and took another careful step forward, reaching for him more slowly this time. "Q, talk to me, what's wrong?"

Margo had appeared on his other side, her expression deeply concerned. "Quentin?"

"El," Q said, the name warped and aching in his throat. He couldn't let himself trust this, not yet, the press of warm, living hands into his shoulders, heat that branded him even through the material of his shirt. Two truths were warring for dominance in his mind. He knew which one he  _wanted_  to believe in, but how could he trust that? How could he let himself fall forward into Eliot's arms if he was going to be ripped away again? "El, what was Teddy's favorite bedtime story when he was a kid?"

Eliot's hands were still on his shoulders. Q made himself be brave, made himself stare into his perfect, expressive,  _living_  face. He saw as Eliot's eyes flickered uncertainly over to Margo, who returned his look of bewilderment and concern.

" _The Hobbit_ ," he answered, like it was nothing. Like the words weren't giving Quentin permission to breathe again. "Q, why - " Eliot stopped, then blinked. "Are you trying to prove that I'm really me?  _Why_? What the fuck happened?"

Q couldn't breathe. He pitched forward, utterly without grace, into Eliot's arms, and tried very hard to keep his tears from transforming into full-on histrionics. Eliot gripped him back tight, shushing him and rubbing a hand up and down his back. "God, Q, you're scaring me, here. Please tell me what's going on."

"You're dead," Quentin croaked into Eliot's chest. "I  _saw_  you - there was blood. Your blood, everywhere. You  _died_."

"What?!" That was Margo. She'd gone straight past concerned and landed in authoritative High King mode. "What do you mean, Q? Where was this?"

Yes, this is why Q had gone to Margo. She would handle it. He could fall the fuck apart now, and she would - she would handle it. "Library. The  _body_ ," he shuddered, felt the tremors roll up him and felt Eliot grip him even tighter in response.

"I'm here, Q. I'm not dead, Quentin, I'm  _right here_."

Margo was already rushing off, and Eliot, clearly still bewildered, and with Q holding on to him for dear life, followed. Q let himself be towed along. He was ducked under Eliot's arm, where he belonged. He brought one of his hands up and put it over Eliot's chest, gasping in relief when he found the beat of his heart waiting for him there. "You're here," Q said. Tried to make sure he believed it. "You're  _here_ , you're here."

When they reached the library, Quentin took them back to the corner. He turned the final corner with his heart in his throat, stomach in knots, but -  it was empty, not the smallest trace of the carnage he had left just minutes earlier. He saw the way Eliot and Margo were both looking at him. He knew what they thought, knew they were worried he was cracking up, losing his mind... and he didn't care. He hoped he  _was_  crazy. That would be infinitely preferable to the alternative.

"I know what I saw," Q said, perfunctory. He turned his face into Eliot's chest and breathed him in, deep. "I saw you. I touched you. You talked to me, and then you fucking died." Q pressed his fingers into Eliot's arm hard enough that Eliot flinched slightly, but neither of them pulled away.

"Okay," Eliot said. "Okay, I believe you, Q."

"We need to figure out what's going on," Margo said, scrutinizing Quentin closely. "Let's gather the others, talk this through - it's possible Q's been bewitched, or something."

"No," Eliot said. "I mean - yes, Margo, you gather the others and start coming up with some explanations for how Q could have - for how this could have happened. But I need to be alone with him for a minute."

Q nodded his fervent agreement into Eliot's chest. He couldn't lift his head. He felt like his entire body was made of stone. Eliot smelled like  _Eliot_. Alive. Home. Alive. Here.  _Alive_.

"C'mon, Q, let's go to our room," Eliot said, speaking to him like one might a frightened toddler who's just awoken from a nightmare. The coddling didn't bother him. He fucking needed it.

As they walked through the corridors, arms around each other, Q knew that Eliot was trying to figure out the right words to say. He hesitated, biting back on them, before finally asking: "Do you want to talk more about it, or... would it be better if we didn't?"

"I don't know," Q said, miserable. "It's like it's branded on the inside of my eyelids, El, I close my eyes and you're - you looked right at me. It was  _you_ , - you were in pain, but you - fuck, you knew you were dying. You told me you loved me."

"God, I'm sorry, that's fucking awful," Eliot said. They turned the corner and made it to their room, swinging the door shut behind them. They stood there for a long moment, while Q tried to re-order the universe inside his mind. This degree of emotional whiplash was really fucking with his head.

"What if - " Q coughed. Tried again. "Eliot, what if it was some kind of vision, or... or... premonition? What if what I saw..."

"No," Eliot said, sounding angry. "No, don't. It's not, Q. I won't leave you, I fucking swear it. I'm not going to let anyone get the drop on me in my own castle."

"You can't," Quentin protested, moving just the slightest bit away from Eliot. "You can't make me promises like that, you have no way of knowing - "

"There's absolutely no reason to think it was a vision of the future, Q. Someone..." and now that Q was paying attention to it, he saw that Eliot  _was_  angry, underneath his obvious worry. "Someone's fucking with your head, making you see things. We're going to find out who, and make them pay for it."

Quentin shook his head. He almost wished to feel empty again, numb. The fear was agonizing. Because if that was someone messing with him, making him hallucinate... "If someone was fucking with me, they could do it again, El, and I just  _can't_  - "

"Shh," Eliot said, gripping Q by the arms and shaking him slightly. "We're going to figure this out. Okay? We always do."

Q laughed, a humorless sound. "Right. Because it's that easy - "

"I'm here, Q, and I'm not going anywhere." Eliot's voice sounded determined, but also soft, and so, so, understanding that Quentin wanted to drown in the sound of it.

"I'm trying really hard to believe that."

"Come here," Eliot said, which was a bit redundant, considering they were already standing face to face, barely an inch of air between them. "I'll prove it - I'll show you." He kissed Quentin then, a slow, deep kiss, wrapping a hand around the back of Q's neck to hold him in place, in that way that just melted him, every time. He let their lips move together for an endless moment, and then he reached for Q's hand, and slid it up his own chest to rest against the beating of his heart. Keeping their foreheads tilted together, he took Q's other hand and curled the fingers of it along his own neck, under his jaw. "Just listen. Do you feel that?"

They were both silent while Q felt for Eliot's heartbeat under one hand, his pulse under the other. Q nodded, brushing their noses together.

"That's me. That's my heart beating for you, Quentin. Always."

Eliot sometimes said things like that - romantic, devastating things, and Q was, without exception,  _wrecked_  by it. Often, it was too much, and Q had to tease Eliot, call him out for being corny as fuck, just to cut through the overwhelming surge of emotion that came from Eliot's full-blown, uncensored words of devotion. But he couldn't break the moment this time. He couldn't get the words past his throat. He just nodded, overcome, and reconnected their lips.

Quentin was trembling within seconds, shaking with a vibrant, frantic sort of need that he didn't recognize in himself. He was on his toes, hands fisted in Eliot's hair, tilting the angle of Eliot's head the way he wanted it. Eliot was letting him lead, his own hands gripped tight against Q's waist, opening his mouth and letting Q take, take, take.

He wanted to crawl inside of Eliot, wanted to fuse them together so Eliot's heartbeat would become his own. Quentin half-expected Eliot to stop him, tell him they had to go meet their friends and figure out what the hell was going on, but Eliot seemed to understand how bad he needed this. Q backed Eliot up to the bed and pushed him onto it, crawling on top of him and swallowing Eliot's sounds of surprised delight at the unexpected reversal to their usual roles.

"You wanna fuck me?" Eliot asked, a little breathless.

They didn't do that often, but the second Eliot said it, Q felt the blood inside of him catch on fire.  _Yes_  he wanted that. He needed it like he needed air. He needed to hold Eliot down and touch every inch of him, convince his brain and body and soul that he was really there, and from the look of naked, deep yearning on Eliot's face, Q was going to get that chance.

* * *

**ELIOT**

Everyone had a theory about Quentin's experience, and none of them were good.

When they first gathered together in Margo, Fen, and Josh's shared chambers, Eliot had been gratified to see his friends all fawn over Quentin, making sure he was alright, settling him in to a comfortable chair big enough for Eliot to share with him so they could remain practically on top of one another. After a few moments of that, the discussion had started in earnest.

Eliot, for his part, didn't even know what to think. There was the small part of his mind that worried that Quentin's broken brain was rearing up again, but even if that had something to do with it, there  _had_ to be something more at play than that.

Quentin had depression, and he had thought spirals and panic attacks and bad dreams - but he didn't hallucinate his partner dying horrifically right in front of him. This was a new ballpark.

Josh had suggested that he'd been poisoned with something that brought on hallucinations, some sort of bad trip, but Q dismissed that immediately; he hadn't eaten anything that day that the others hadn't also had, and the food had come straight from the kitchen to the counsel chambers in Josh's own hands.

The other, more obvious possibility, would be some sort of a curse.

Margo had thought of one that she'd learned about at Brakebills, one that created feelings of loss in its victims, but that wasn't right either - "I didn't  _feel loss_ ," Q had said, and then blinked a few times, his face taking on a haunted expression. Eliot felt his heart clench in sympathy. "I mean, I did. Obviously. Feel loss, that is. But it was um. More than that." Eliot gripped Quentin's hand, hard. They were wedged side-by-side in the chair, their bodies pressed together shoulder to thigh, a line of comforting connection.

"Maybe we shouldn't focus on what happened, but rather  _how_. Or...  _who_ ," Fen suggested. "If someone cursed you, Quentin, they must have thought they had reason."

"It would have to be someone who knew me," Q said. "I mean - they knew how to  _hurt_  me, what specifically would..."

"No," Margo said, shaking her head decisively. "That's not necessarily the case. It could be..." she hesitated, an uncharacteristic look of gentleness on her face. She met Eliot's eyes, and Eliot found himself disturbingly unable to read her mind. "Q, it could be that someone cursed you to face your worst nightmare. They wouldn't need to know specifically what that was. It - it could be your own mind conjuring up the scariest shit you can think of."

Q's hand tightened on Eliot's, the knuckles standing out white. Eliot shifted in the chair to bring them that much closer. Q's pain was his pain, and Eliot was feeling it acutely now. He knew Quentin Coldwater better than anyone else in the world. He'd lived a whole lifetime with him and was just starting on a second one, as well. But right now, it would have been easy for even a total stranger to tell that Quentin was petrified. He was shaken to his very core, and Eliot couldn't blame him for it given what he'd just experienced.

"Yeah," Quentin said, his voice strangled. "My worst nightmare. That tracks."

There was a long pause. "Who would want to fuck with you like that?" Josh asked. "You're...  _Quentin._ "

"You'd be surprised," Eliot said, teeth gritted. He was remembering another curse, one that attacked not Quentin's mind but his body, leaving him weak, dying, a year and a half before. He'd nearly lost him then, and he wasn't keen on repeating the experience.

"Apparently I just have one of those curse-able faces," Quentin said, shrugging. It was said like a joke, but his eyes were still anguished.

"The mermaids," Fen said suddenly. "I've just had a thought - the princess said something about how you needed to feel pain..."

"In order to be worthy to speak of it," Quentin finished. "Shit."

Margo pursed her lips. "We can't go accusing our guests of - "

"They fucking hurt him," Eliot snapped, interrupting Margo. He'd been trying very hard over the past couple of hours to stay calm for Quentin's sake, but there was an undercurrent of rage surging higher and higher within him, and the thought of being  _diplomatic_  with the people who had done something to Q wasn't helping him keep his cool. His fingers were aching from how tightly he was holding Quentin's hand, but neither of them seemed inclined to stop. "They  _hurt_  him, Margo. No way in hell I'm playing nice."

"Hey," Quentin said, taking the hand that wasn't already tangled up with Eliot's and rubbing it along his arm. "El, don't overreact, okay, we don't need to fuck up peace talks just because I freaked out."

"Freaked out?" Eliot said, raising his eyebrows. "Q, honey, you lost your goddamn mind. And I'm not saying I blame you, I mean, I  _am_  pretty irreplaceable. But what happened to you wasn't... it wasn't a  _prank_ , it was psychological torture. I'm going to fucking rip them apart for this."

"No you  _won't_ ," Margo said. "Eliot, I forbid you to approach them. I mean it."

"You can't - "

"She  _can_ ," Fen said, firm. "Eliot, I get that you're angry. And I think we're right about this, I think it's the mermaids who did this, some sort of irony curse so Q had to suffer the pain of lost love like the princess did." She paused, looking around at the group with an expression of determined logic on her face. "But the thing is, we don't have proof. And we also have to acknowledge that there could be a difference in customs, here. For all we know, this kind of magic is common-place for them, just a way of learning a lesson."

"If this is their  _custom_ ," Q said, shuddering. "Then they're a seriously fucked up people and I'm not sure we want anything to do with them."

Eliot ducked his head down and buried his face in Q's hair, feeling his eyes burn. He fucking hated seeing Quentin like this, all weak and unsteady and scared. "Let's do some research on this," Eliot said. "I can help out, but for now I think I need to take Q to our room."

"No, it's okay," Q said. "I can help, I want to."

"Tomorrow," Eliot insisted. "Why don't you go to bed, I'll meet up with you in a few minutes, okay? I've just got to talk over something with Margo and Fen first."

Q nodded, still looking a little haunted, and stood up, pulling Eliot with him. He leaned up for a kiss, which Eliot gave him automatically, trying to ignore the way Quentin seemed to be trembling slightly.

"Hurry," Quentin said as he broke the kiss and stepped back from Eliot. "I don't want to be alone right now."

Quentin left the room, and Eliot took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. His priority was, and always would be, Quentin. But he couldn't be angry at Fen and Margo for thinking about the bigger picture. "If we get proof that they did this to him, what are we going to do about it?"

Margo and Fen shared a glance. Josh, who was sitting between them, grimaced, and when neither of the women answered, he opened his own mouth. "I think we play it cool. I think we use it as a bargaining chip."

"Quentin is  _not_  a - "

"Eliot, sweetie, you have got to calm the fuck down," Margo interrupted. "You're not the only person in this room who loves Q, alright? I'm livid that someone would do this to him, but going off the handle isn't going to help anything. Q's fine. He's a bit shaken, but I have every confidence that you'll be able to cuddle him back to full health in no time."

Eliot bit back a retort at Margo's slightly mocking tone of voice. "Fine. I'll just. I need to go be with him right now. But I'm telling you, if they did this, they need to pay for it."

He left the room before he could hear their placating answers. He'd let the actual royalty deal with diplomacy. He had bigger things to worry about.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Q had only been back in his and Eliot's chambers for about a minute when he heard a sound on the other side of the door. It was a thump, like something heavy falling against it. He blinked, and went to open the door.

A figure stumbled into the room, hands gripped tight around his stomach.

"Eliot? What - "

"Q," Eliot said, his voice strained, and Quentin saw, with a sort of incredulous horror, that there was blood seeping out from between Eliot's fingers. "Q, I'm - I'm sorry, you were - right - "

"No," Quentin said. The sound of his own voice in his ears sounded odd to him. Detached. Unreal. As Eliot, pale and shaking, fell to his knees, Q went with him, gripping at the front of Eliot's shirt to hold him upright. "No. I - this isn't. It's not real."

"Premonition, like... like you said," Eliot mumbled, falling heavily against Q and letting out a little moan of pain.

"Fuck. No. I cannot do this again," Quentin said, his voice still cold and disbelieving.

"Q, I love you. I need you to know that, I love you so much." Eliot's voice was getting softer, his head pressed into Q's shoulder.

"Not real," Quentin said firmly, even as he pulled Eliot further into his arms, his limbs starting to shake. "Not fucking real."

"I wish - we should have had more time," Eliot said, and then, with little fanfare, he went completely limp, one final breath expelled, warm, against Q's neck.

_Not real._

Quentin should stand up. He had to stand up and walk down the hallway to Margo's chambers, where Eliot was sitting, safe and sound with Margo, and Fen, and Josh. He had to go and see him and touch him and.

But. What if.

He'd told Eliot to hurry up and join him. And... what if - what if -  _what if_  - a premonition. A vision of the future. It was. It was possible, Quentin had to admit that to himself. He felt the lump in his throat grow larger, felt the impossibility of taking in a breath. Eliot's body was a warm weight against him. The blood still leaking from his stomach was staining the carpeted floor beneath them, along with Quentin's own clothing. He had to get up now. He had to leave Eliot's body here and go down the hallway and get the real Eliot, the alive one. But what if he was wrong? As long as he stayed here he could hope - he could -

"Fuck,  _fuck_ , Eliot,  _please_ ," Quentin said, burying his head in Eliot's hair. "I can't do this. I can't. I can't." Quentin's mind was holding on to what he knew to be true, to be logical. This wasn't real. This was another hallucination, another trick. But his body - his body was somehow grieving again, tears burning hot down his cheeks, that hollow feeling of nothingness closing in around him. He felt unreal, undone. "I love you," he said, voice muffled into Eliot's hair. "Please don't be dead.  _Please_  don't be dead."

It felt like hours, and like no time at all. And then - the figure in his arms started to - move? No, it wasn't moving it was - it was vanishing, little patches coming apart and dissipating into a fine powder. Before Q could process it, he was crouched on the floor of his bedroom by the doorway, no sign at all of Eliot's corpse. The blood, which had been seeping into the knees of Quentin's pants, was gone too. He blinked a couple of times, felt his muscles lock up, holding in the tension and the fear and the pain, and then -

"Q? What are you doing on the floor?"

Eliot walked in the door, whole and alive, and crouched down to where Q was sitting.

"Happened again," was all Q could manage, and then he passed out. The last thing he heard was Eliot's small yelp of alarm, and the feeling of warm, strong arms catching him before his head could hit the floor.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another quick note of context for those who haven't read "Lover's Touch." - Alice and Julia are a couple. The last story explores the beginnings of Julia's feelings for Alice, but here we see that they've gotten together. Q's a little too worried about other things for it to be dwelt on much, but it does get brought up, so I thought I'd mention it.

**ELIOT**

"Did you find anything?" Eliot asked immediately as he saw Fen enter the room. Quentin was curled up in the bed, his head on Eliot's lap. He'd only lost consciousness for a moment, and for the last hour he had been shaking like a leaf, staring up at Eliot with red-rimmed eyes, looking shell-shocked and desperately, breathtakingly sad. Eliot was brushing his fingers through Quentin's hair, trying to keep his breathing even. Quentin was freaking out. There was no room for Eliot to fall apart too. Luckily, a palace guard had been walking down the corridor around the same time that Eliot had returned to the room, so Eliot had been able to send for the others to tell them what had happened.

"Yes. Well, maybe," Fen said. "We don't know. There are a couple of different curses that could be causing this type of vision. Quentin, was it the same injury both times?"

Quentin blinked a few times, looking into Eliot's face, and then he managed a small nod. "Stomach. Like. Like the axe."

"Fuck me," Eliot said quietly, swallowing around a lump in his throat. This had to be conjurations from Q's mind, then. It had to be. Quentin was picturing the last time Eliot had nearly died, was reliving it in some sort of sickening, hyper-realistic loop.

"Right. There are a few different possibilities," Fen said, looking anxiously at Q. "There are some curses like Margo suggested, ones that make you see your worst nightmare, and there's one that specifically makes you watch loved ones die in front of you - but that one's usually  _different_  loved ones, not the same one over and over - "

Quentin let out a little moan, and then sat up so quickly that Eliot had to lean backwards to avoid their heads colliding. "Not over and over. I won't watch that again."

"Shh, Q, it's okay," Eliot said, gripping at Q's arm as he tried to get out of the bed. "I'm here."

Q looked at him, haunted. "I just watched you die bloody, twice in one day. I'm not doing that again."

"Okay, so you won't." Eliot said. He had no idea how to promise something like that, but he did it anyway - anything to get that look off of Q's face. "Quentin, listen. Both times this has happened, you were alone, right? So maybe if we make sure someone's always with you, that will help. If you see anything, you'll have someone with you to tell you it's not real."

Q nodded. "That's something, at least."

"And we'll figure out what this is," Eliot continued. "We'll figure it out no matter what, Q, and we'll make sure it stops." Logically, Eliot was aware that this wasn't his fault in any way, but he felt an uncomfortable squirm of guilt for letting Q go back to their room alone. He'd said he didn't want to be by himself, and Eliot had left him, to continue his stupid conversation about  _consequences_  with Margo and Fen. There was rage within him, certainly - a boiling anger at the mermaids or whoever had dared to cause Q this kind of pain. But even that was secondary to his primary goal, which was to make sure Quentin was alright.

"It's late," Q said, ignoring Eliot's assurances. "We should all probably get some sleep. We're supposed to continue negotiations in the morning."

"But - " Fen started.

"Later," Eliot interrupted. "Just... try and rest, Fen. Tell Margo and Josh to get some sleep too. We'll all feel better in the morning." It was one of those pointless platitudes that his mother had once been so fond of. It felt better than saying nothing at all, but only slightly.

Once Fen had left, Eliot curled up beside Q in the bed. Q was usually the little spoon, or else he was curled up with his head on Eliot's chest, but tonight he arranged them so they were face to face, foreheads practically touching, heads rested on the same pillow. "I need to look at you," Q said. Eliot's heart turned over in his chest. He adored it when Q asked for what he wanted, what he needed. It reminded Eliot of how far they'd come since their early relationship in Fillory, when Q had gladly accepted every scrap of affection Eliot gave to him, but never vocalized his own feelings. It had gotten them into more than a little trouble, as Eliot and Quentin had both been stubborn enough not to realize how much they were loved.

If there was anything good to come out of the last time Quentin had been cursed, it had been that they'd been forced to talk, and talk, and  _talk_  through all of their issues, so that by now they had gotten very good at this whole communication thing. It wasn't something Eliot would have expected of himself, but he was actually pretty proud of this newly acquired skill. "Hey," he said, looking into Q's eyes, just inches away from him in the dark.

"Hey," Q said.

"Tell me what you need."

"Just you."

"Hmm. Sleep?"

Q nodded, but then scooted himself closer in the bed and connected their lips, a slow, exploring kiss that would have buckled Eliot's knees, if he hadn't already been lying down. They kissed that way for an endless moment, and then Q pulled back, his eyes darting around Eliot's face like he was trying to memorize every inch of it. "Eliot."

"Yeah."

"Don't die, okay?"

Eliot's heart twisted in his chest. The expression on Q's face was one of earnest hopefulness, like he really wanted Eliot to make that promise, like if he heard the words, he would believe them. Eliot swallowed.

"I - Quentin - "

Q's eyes squeezed shut and he shook his head, putting a hand briefly over Eliot's mouth to stop him from answering. "No, sorry. That's not fair to say. I shouldn't..."

"I will never,  _ever_  leave you if I have the choice," Eliot said. "That's the best I can manage. If I could promise you - I would, Q. I'd give you anything you asked for."

Quentin smiled at him, and it was maybe a little weak, but definitely genuine, for all that. "I know you would."

He sighed, settling himself more comfortably into the bed, and after one last searching look into Eliot's eyes, he closed his own. Eliot kept his arms around him, listening, until Q's breath evened out into the rhythm of deep sleep.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Quentin jerked awake the next morning to the sound of pounding on the door, and felt Eliot, gratifyingly near, wake as well.

"They're  _gone_!" a livid voice was wailing from the outside the room. "Those fucking bitches are  _gone_!"

"Margo?" Eliot asked. Before either of them could stand up and answer the door, she'd swung it open, hard enough that it banged against the wall.

"The merbitches are GONE."

"What?!" Eliot and Quentin said in unison.

"Okay, forget what I said about diplomacy, this is goddamn  _war_."

"Bambi," Eliot said uncertainly, sitting up in the bed. "They're mermaids. We had them in a pool, not connected to any larger source of water - how the fuck did they go without us knowing about it?"

"Accomplices," Margo said darkly. "Our useless guards saw fucking  _dryads_  helping them out of the pool in the early hours, but by the time they gave chase, they'd slipped into the river."

"So I guess that confirms our suspicions," Q said dully. "They did something to me."

"Can I kill them for it now?" Eliot asked Margo through gritted teeth.

"Not if I kill them first," Margo said, coming further into the room to pet Quentin on the top of his head.

Q rolled his eyes, but felt absurdly grateful for the protectiveness of them both. "Maybe less killing, more figuring out what the hell is going on?"

"Fen and Josh are researching, and we've already sent a delegation to try and get an explanation out of them. With luck, whatever happened to Q can be reversed easily."

Q scoffed at that, tilting sideways into Eliot's warmth. "When does luck ever go my way on this kind of thing?"

"It doesn't matter anyway," Eliot said. "Nobody's leaving you alone today, Q. You won't have to go through it again."

Margo nodded emphatically. "Unfortunately, ruling Fillory stops for no woman. I've got to go meet with advisers this morning, but for now, El, you've got the day off. Stay with baby Q, help Fen and Josh with research if you're so inclined. If we don't get answers from those fuckers soon, I'll march down to their dumb little grotto myself, and beat it out of 'em."

* * *

Eliot stayed with Quentin all morning, but that afternoon a delegation of peasants who were having trouble calendaring their crop rotations came to the castle, and as much as Eliot had always tried to run from his rural past, his expertise were decidedly needed. Q had contemplated coming along to the meeting, but chided himself that he needed to get used to letting Eliot out of his sight sooner or later. He gave Eliot what he hoped was a totally normal parting kiss and let him walk away from him towards his meeting. Margo had graciously volunteered - or rather had  _been_  volunteered by an insistent Eliot, to stay with Q.

"What do you want to do on this play-date of ours?" Margo asked, looping her arm through Q's and steering him down one of the castle's many labyrinthine corridors.

"I'm sorry you're stuck with babysitting," Q said, trying for a self-deprecating smile.

"Oh, don't be silly," Margo said, her tone somewhere between sincere and cloying. "I always like spending time with you." She paused then, forcing Q to jolt to a halt in the hallway as well. "Quentin, listen."

"What?"

"I'm really -  _really_  sorry about what's happened to you."

"It's not like it's your fault, Margo," Q said, a little startled by her serious tone.

Margo just shrugged. "I love Eliot. I used to think nobody could ever love him as much as I did, and then you came along. I've seen how much this has affected you, and I just wanted you to know that I'm not dismissing it, how hard this has been."

Quentin opened his mouth to respond, not really sure what to say under the onslaught of Margo's sincerity. He blinked at her a few times, and then a strange shuffling noise from around the corner of the corridor caught his ear.

"Do you hear that?" he asked, instantly alert.

"No - what is it?"

And then Eliot shuffled weakly around the corner, the disturbingly familiar sight of blood staining the front of his vest.

"Fuck," Quentin said, squeezing his eyes shut at the sight. He gripped hard onto Margo's arm. "Margo, it's - "

"El?" Margo's voice was panicked, and before Quentin could fully process it, she'd stepped away from him and towards the hallucination. Quentin's eyes widened, his pulse sped up. Something in the center of his chest went very cold.

"El!" Margo repeated, reaching for Eliot and grabbing his shoulders just as Eliot slid down the wall to the floor. "Oh my God -  _guards!_  Help!"

"You - can see him?" Quentin asked, numb.

"Eliot, sweetie, stay with me!" Margo gasped.

"Q," Eliot said, his voice very quiet, hoarse. "Bambi."

Quentin moved on auto-pilot, coming to crouch down on the other side of Eliot, even as he tried to re-order his mind around this new development. "You're not real," he told Eliot. He felt quite calm about it. Quite certain. Because the alternative was not one he knew how to face.

"Quentin," Eliot said, trying to smile. His teeth were stained red. "It's okay, it doesn't hurt anymore."

" _No_!" Margo wailed.

"Margo, it's okay," Q said, keeping his eyes fixed on Eliot's face. "Margo, he's not real. It's not real, this is what happened the first two times."

"But - but I can see him - I can  _touch_  him -  _Eliot_."

There were footsteps and then two palace guards rounded the corner, and accompanying them was -

"What the fuck?!" Margo screeched. She flinched back from the dying Eliot on the castle floor, staring up in shock at Eliot Waugh, the  _real_  Eliot Waugh, standing tall and uninjured, a look of profound shock on his face.

"We heard yelling," Eliot said, his eyes wide and disbelieving at the sight of his own mangled body on the floor.

"Q," the dying Eliot said, pawing gracelessly at the front of Quentin's shirt, trying to get a grip. Q watched as Margo jumped to her feet and threw herself on the real Eliot, but felt oddly unable to move. He turned back to the dying figure in front of him.

"Hey," he said. "It's okay. You're not real."

"Feels real," Eliot said, his forehead scrunched up in confusion. "You're crying."

"Well," Q said, a little helpless. "Yeah. Can't really control that."

The dying figure in front of him lifted a weak arm, brushing with clumsy fingers at the tears on Quentin's cheek. Q leaned in to the touch.

" _Quentin._ " Eliot's voice was severe and frantic behind him, and Q, with a herculean effort, tore his eyes away from the dying Eliot and turned to look at the living one. Eliot crouched down and tried to pull him away. "Q, that's not me. Get away from it."

"Q - don't go - " Dying Eliot tried to sit up, a look of panic and longing on his face, but then shuddered in pain and fell back against the wall.

"Don't listen to it, I'm right here," Eliot said, tugging on Q's arm.

"Q, he's right, back away," Margo said. Q looked up at her and saw that her face was frozen into a rigid mask. She was studiously avoiding the sight of Eliot's mangled body on the floor, staring instead at the healthy and whole version.

"Quentin," dying Eliot said, voice gone soft and wavering. "Quentin, I'm - I'm sorry. Please -  _please_  stay with me, I don't want to die alone - "

"Shut up," Eliot snarled at himself.

Q felt like he might be about to burst into hysterical laughter, and he bit his own tongue, hard. He really, really, wanted to stand up and press his face into Eliot's chest, hold him, alive and warm until everything about this moment was a distant memory. But he also wanted to comfort the Eliot that was gasping and bleeding out on the floor right in front of him.

"El," Q said, not sure which one he was talking to. He turned back to the dying Eliot and gripped his hand, hard. "El, it's okay. You can rest now."

"Love you so much," dying Eliot mumbled, his eyelids fluttering madly in an effort to stay open. "Margo. Q. Love you."

His eyes flickered once more, and then slid shut. A few agonized, frozen seconds passed. Q could feel Eliot and Margo both behind him, their hands gripped hard on either of his shoulders. The Eliot on the floor in front of him breathed in, and then exhaled, and went still.

Q let go of his hand, and fell back, hard, into Eliot's chest.

"Fucking Jesus fucking Christ -  _Fuck_." Margo said, eloquent as ever, and she buried her head in Eliot's shoulder, pressing herself up against Eliot and Q both.

"Q," Eliot breathed into his ear. "Q, I'm here."

Q nodded numbly into Eliot's chest. "Yeah."

"How is this possible?" one of the guards said, gaping at the corpse against the wall. Quentin had mostly forgotten they were there.

"It'll be gone in a few minutes," Q said, muffled into Eliot's chest. He felt Eliot duck down and kiss his forehead, leaving his face buried in Q's hair. "It disappears after a bit."

The numbness was starting to fade a little, but he clung to it. He couldn't decide if this time had been better or worse than the first two. Having Eliot and Margo both there, knowing they could both see it, made him feel - well... he couldn't tell. It was nice to know that he wasn't cracking up, maybe. But at the same time, having proof that whatever was happening wasn't just a simple hallucination meant that something more sinister might be at play.

"It's okay," Eliot said, face buried in his hair. "It's not real."

"It feels real," Q said, echoing Eliot's dying words. "It feels real every time."

* * *

**ELIOT**

"So... you both saw it too," Fen said, cautious. They were back in Margo's chambers. The guards had been dismissed, under firm instructions not to gossip about what they'd seen, but Eliot was pretty sure even Margo's methods of persuasion wouldn't be enough to keep this particular story a secret.

Eliot was shaking, adrenaline coursing through his body as if it was trying to remind him that he was alive. The sight of  _himself,_ weak and shivering apart on the floor, blood staining everything... it had been terrifying. Margo and Quentin both couldn't stop touching him, gripping hard onto his arms, but he didn't mind. Their presence was keeping him grounded.

"Yes," Margo said. "Yes, I saw it. It... it was so real. He was really there, really dying, and then..."

"Quentin," Josh asked, sounding a little hesitant. "Since you're the only one who's seen it more than once... is it the same thing every time?"

Eliot felt Q go tense next to him, then turn and press his forehead into Eliot's shoulder. He tilted his face up to look at Eliot for a moment, as if needing proof of his continued existence. "Um," he started, answering Josh but still looking at Eliot. "It's not exactly the same, but it's... similar. It's always the same injury. And. He always talks to me. Says similar stuff, not the exact same words, but..."

"What sort of stuff?" Fen asked, gentle as always.

Eliot watched Q's eyes snap shut, watched him shake his head like he was trying to dislodge a painful memory.

"What does it matter?" Eliot asked, feeling protective. He pulled his other arm out of Margo's iron grip so he could pull Q fully into an embrace.

"Any clues we can gather..." Fen said, apologetic.

"It's okay, El," Q said. The tone of his voice was making Eliot feel cold and helpless. Q sounded empty, hollowed out. He turned to face Josh and Fen, taking a deep breath. "When it happens, he's... it's... he's confused, and scared, and - he tells me he loves me."

Fen and Josh both bit back on grimaces. Eliot tightened his arms around Q.

"I have a theory," Fen said slowly. She gestured to a table in the corner of the room, and everyone took their seats. Eliot pulled his seat closer to Q's, completely un-self-conscious about it, and reached a hand out for Margo, who gripped it as she sat down on his other side.

"The mermaids play around a lot with time magic," Fen said. "I think maybe a piece of Eliot is stuck in some sort of a modified loop, or - "

"You think it's real?" Quentin interrupted. "You think - what - you think it's really Eliot?" He sounded horrified, and Eliot wished suddenly that he'd go back to being hollow. This was worse. "So - like - it's going to happen for real, if we can't - "

"No," Fen interrupted, firm. "I'm not saying that. I don't know enough about this to be sure, but I think maybe they're extracting a bit of Eliot's... life essence, or what have you, and using it to scare you, Q."

"What does that mean?" Margo bit out. "His life essence - Fen, if this is hurting Eliot, the  _real_  Eliot - "

"It's not," Eliot said. "I think I would notice if - "

"Maybe not," Fen said, looking apologetic. "This type of magic is pretty subtle."

Margo let out a harsh laugh. "There was nothing  _subtle_  about what I just saw, Fen. It was bloody and physical and real and fucking _awful_. We need to go to those goddamn mermaids and make them fix this."

"And how do we do that?" Josh asked. He wasn't being argumentative, he really meant the question. But it brought the room up short for a moment as everyone thought over the complications. Q's grip on Eliot's arm was so tight it was painful, but Eliot didn't shift away. He could almost hear Q's rapid, pained heartbeat from where he was sitting.

"I think we might be in over our heads." It was Margo who had spoken, and just hearing her admit such a thing made Eliot feel somehow even worse.

"I agree," Josh said. "I think it's time we call in reinforcements.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Julia had come to visit Castle Whitespire several times over the last year and a half, and Q had been back to Earth, too, so it wasn't like he didn't know about the whole Julia-and-Alice thing, but seeing them together in Fillory, as a  _couple_ , was a little surreal.

They weren't flaunting it or anything. The situation was still extremely awkward for all parties involved. Normally, when Q was with Eliot around Alice, he tried to be respectful and not overly affectionate, and Alice and Julia seemed to be employing the same measures. They weren't touching, but they were standing very close together.

Q, for his part, had abandoned his normal scruples about hurting Alice's feelings through flaunting his love for Eliot in front of her. For one thing, she'd clearly moved on. For another, Q was afraid it might kill him if he had to stop touching Eliot right now. The feel of El's warm, living skin under his hands was the only thing stopping him from full-on hyperventilation.

"It's so good to see you both," Q said, and meant it. He hugged Alice first, then Julia, a little longer, then snapped back to Eliot's side like a rubber-band.

"Thank you for coming," Eliot said, civil if not exactly warm.

"So, here are my notes," Fen said, skipping forward and handing a stack of paper to Julia, and another to Alice. Fen got along very well with both women, once they'd all had a chance to get to know one another.

Q let the women rush off to spread the papers over the table together, Alice pulling a thick, musty tome out of her shoulder bag as they went.

"Kady says hi," Julia said as she joined the others.

"Hi back," Q said automatically. "Did Josh fill you in on everything?"

Alice looked over her shoulder at him and frowned. "Yes. Sort of. I - Q, I'm so sorry about this."

Q shook his head. He felt overdosed on sympathy and concern right now. He needed it from Eliot, but it was starting to become grating from everyone else. "We just need to find out what's going on," he said, aware that he sounded timid and terrified. "We just need to stop it, at all costs."

Eliot's chin pressed into the top of his head, and his arms snaked around the front of Q's waist. "We will," he said quietly. "We will, Q, I swear."

"Based on Fen's theory, and what we've been told," Julia said, "I think Alice may have found a way to diagnose the curse, or whatever it is."

"Diagnose?" Margo asked. She'd given Julia a friendly greeting, and Alice a passably polite one, but she was being uncharacteristically quiet as the group settled in to pour over their notes. Q knew that seeing Eliot die had shaken her worse than she was willing to admit.

"We need to know exactly what's going on, before we can fix it," Alice said. "The thing is, Q..." she was looking at him again with sympathy. "We need to see Eliot die in order to pin down what's going on."

"No," Q said immediately. "No, I can't."

"Q," Eliot said, painfully soft, ducking his head down to kiss the side of his jaw.

"I think whatever's going on might be hurting Eliot," Alice said. "I can't be sure, but we need to find out, Quentin, and I honestly can't think of a better way..."

"It's too much," Q said, looking at Eliot with wide eyes. "I don't want to see that again - I can't - "

"We don't know how to stop it anyway, Q," Margo said. "We thought it only happened when you were alone, but that's obviously not the case. All we have to do is be ready for it when it comes again."

He knew Margo was right, but the very idea of watching it again choked him with pain and fear. It  _did_  feel real. Three times in a row, just as real as burying him in Fillory had been, in another lifetime. How could he keep doing this? How could he keep watching?

"It doesn't happen when I'm with Eliot," Q said. "It hasn't yet, anyway."

"Three times isn't a big enough sample size - " Alice began, but Julia put a restraining arm on her shoulder. Q watched the interplay between them, only vaguely curious.

Julia's voice took on a gentle, coaxing tone as she spoke. "There's a spell," she said. "Basically, once we see another - um - vision, or whatever this is, Alice will be able to track the target of the magic, hold it in stasis and run a diagnostic on it, essentially. It's not complex, but she'll need a second set of hands, and obviously I'm not a candidate."

"I can't," Q echoed, hollow.

"Yes you can," Alice said. "You  _can_ , Q. For Eliot, and for yourself. It's just a bit of cooperative magic, nothing too difficult, and then we'll have answers. We can fix this, I know we can."

"Q," Eliot said, voice low in his ear. "Come with me. Let's talk alone, okay?"

Quentin let himself be led out of the room, leaving Alice, Julia, Margo, and Fen to go over theories and methods on how to break whatever curse the mermaids had put on Q. Or on all of them, maybe. Nothing was clear anymore. Q wanted very badly to close his eyes, go back to sleep, where the warmth and presence of Eliot would melt into his soul and keep him grounded. Instead, he let Eliot lead him around a corner into a small antechamber.

"Quentin," Eliot said, gripping both of his shoulders hard. He looked heartbroken, but also determined. "I need you to be brave."

* * *

**ELIOT**

Eliot wanted to actually kill those stupid fucking mermaids with his bare hands. He'd had plenty of reasons to be angry in his life, plenty of people to despise for lots of legitimate reasons, but seeing Quentin like this - worn down, broken and desperate and totally hopeless, was a whole other level of pain. The people responsible for this were going to die slowly, if he had anything to say about it.

And yet, there he was, standing in front of Quentin, wanting nothing more than to wrap him in his arms and promise to take all his troubles away... and he had to convince him to go through it again, instead.

"Q, I understand it's awful, but if we're ever going to figure this thing out we've got to let it happen again, okay?"

Q shuddered and closed his eyes, and Eliot pressed on past the lump in his throat. "If you see me bleeding out in a hallway somewhere, you'll  _know_  it's not real. I can't force you to do this if you don't agree, but we can't exactly - "

"You saw what it was like," Q said, cutting him off. "Just. For one second, please try and picture it, okay?" The lost look on Quentin's face had hardened suddenly, into a flinty expression that Eliot was powerless to resist. "You're going about your day, everything is normal, and then you turn the corner and I'm lying on the ground in a pool of my own blood. I'm in terrible pain, and I'm begging you to hold me while I die."

Despite himself, Eliot  _could_ picture it, and felt his blood run cold in his veins. He'd seen the haunted look on Q's face over the past several days, but he'd been trying to keep a sort of academic distance from it, for his own sanity if nothing else. He'd seen himself dying, and that was odd enough, but imagining Quentin in his place was terrifying in a way he didn't know how to process.

Quentin stared him down, his expression a potent combination of desolation and determination, and continued before Eliot could respond. "Knowing it's not real is the only thing that stops me from throwing myself out of the nearest window, but it's still fucking torture. Do you get that?"

 "I'm sorry," Eliot said, voice cracking. "I get it, okay, I can't even imagine."

"You can't," Quentin said, firm. "And I know you're right, I know we're going to have to investigate, in order to get answers on this thing, but I just... I need. I need one more day, okay? Just one more day.  _Please_."

Eliot could deny him nothing, although privately he wondered what one more day was going to accomplish.

They spent that day quietly together, leaving Margo and the others to entertain Alice and Julia, and to prepare the components of the spell that would hopefully bring them closer to answers.

It was decided that they'd meet together in Margo's chambers the next morning, and that Eliot would stay there while Q went with Alice and Julia to await another vision. They had no way of knowing precisely how long it would take. The first two visions of death had happened closer together, the third had taken a little longer, and it had been almost twenty-four hours since then.

Q was distracted and anxious in the morning, and Eliot felt himself growing more and more helpless as time went on. Three times, Quentin had watched him die. More, if you counted the other traumas of their lives - a golem bleeding out in a bank, an old man drifting off in his chair in Fillory. Eliot had been spared the experience, but could imagine only too well what it would be like. This wasn't the sort of thing Eliot knew how to help with. He could defend and protect Quentin with his body, and he could usually find a way to help him out of the dark and twisted recesses of his own mind, but this situation was one he was powerless to solve.

"When this is over," Quentin said at one point during breakfast, as they sat together in a private dining room, "we should take a trip."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Somewhere - away. For a while. Just you and me."

"That sounds perfect," Eliot said. He leaned forward and Q met him half way, kissing him softly. "Hey - Q?"

"Mm," Q said, still against his lips.

"Are you doing okay?"

Q pulled back, blinking at him. "No," he said. "Obviously not."

Eliot squeezed his eyes shut at that. "No, right, yeah, I know. But I just meant - are you uh...  _handling_ it okay?"

Q let out a humorless laugh. "I'm not doing great, El. I wish I would say different, but I can't lie to you."

Eliot felt his eyes stinging. "I hate this so fucking much, you know that? Seeing you in pain. Being helpless to do anything about it."

Q smiled at him. "I know that. I know you'd give anything to protect me from this. But right now, it's okay to be worried about yourself, too."

"What?" Eliot asked, blinking.

"Fen's theories, and what Alice thinks might be going on... it's fucking terrifying, El. For me, obviously, but for you too."

It was probably very fucked up that Eliot hadn't really considered the ramifications for himself in all of this.

"Whatever's going on, it's designed to hurt you, Quentin," Eliot said softly. "I don't think I'm in any real danger here."

"Hurting you hurts me," Q said. "We don't know what these people are capable of."

"But it's the injury from the axe. That's straight out of your head, and Margo's too, so maybe it's only a manifestation of past fear - "

"It's not  _only_  anything," Q said. "I - I feel it. In my bones. It feels so fucking real, El, I don't - I don't know how to explain it to you." He shook his head, frustrated, standing from the table. Eliot stood with him, magnetized as always, and Q folded himself immediately into Eliot's arms, squeezing tight.

"I love you," Eliot said, because it was the only thing he could think of. And because Quentin never got tired of hearing it. And because it was true.

Q nodded against his chest. "I love you too." Then he stood up straight, a look of desperation and strength in his eyes. "Let's get this over with."

* * *

Q was kissing him like he was about to go off to war. Deep, desperate, Hollywood kisses, and Eliot, despite the wretched feeling in his chest over what he knew Q was feeling, let himself get swept up in the moment, wrapping his arms around Q's waist and lifting him off the ground to bring them closer together. It was a testament to Margo's love for them both that she didn't protest the dramatics, just let them carry on until Q, shuddering, finally pulled away from Eliot. He looked at him, eyes darting over Eliot's face.

Eliot gripped his hand in both of his own, and raised it to his lips, kissing it. "I'm alive, Q. I'm going to be here in Margo's suite, and I  _won't leave_ , okay? No matter what. So if you see me, it's not real. It's not real, and I'm okay."

Quentin nodded his head, jaw clenched. "Yeah. I know. I know that."

"You've got the spell memorized?" Margo asked.

Q nodded at her without looking away from Eliot. He leaned up for one last kiss and then turned away and walked out of the room abruptly, letting the door slam shut behind him. Margo came up and grabbed Eliot's hand, squeezing tight.

"Shit, he's really freaked out by all of this."

"Wouldn't you be?" Eliot asked. "God, I just. I wish I could help him, but what am I even supposed to say? I'd fucking  _lose_ it if I had to - " he sucked in a breath. Ever since Q had described it to him, he'd been seeing it whenever he closed his eyes. Quentin, whimpering in pain, reaching out for him, saying goodbye.  _Dying_. Dead. Quentin, dead. It was an insurmountable horror. He'd do anything in the world to spare Quentin from pain, but he was grateful, in a guilty sort of a way, that their positions weren't reversed right now.

"Yeah. I mean, Q's clingy on a good day, but I don't suppose we can be surprised at how he's taking this..."

"He's not clingy," Eliot said, a little miffed at the word choice. "I mean, no more than I am."

Margo raised an eyebrow. "No, I would agree with that statement, El. You're  _both_ clingy."

"That's not the word I would use."

"Co-dependent?" Margo suggested.

Eliot turned to face her dead-on. "Something you want to say, Bambi?"

"I'm saying it," Margo shot back. "I get it, you love each other, but sometimes..."

"Sometimes what?"

"Eliot, you've seen the way Q's been acting. What do you think he'd be like if something actually happened to you?"

"I imagine it would fuck him up," Eliot said, trying not to snap. "Your point?"

"And you, El? What would you do if Quentin died?"

He tried very hard to keep his face carefully blank, but just the words sent his heart plummeting to his stomach, and he felt his eye twitch. "Fuck off, Margo."

"Eliot, there's loving someone, and then there's becoming completely and totally dependent on them for your own happiness. I know that if something happened to Josh or Fen, I'd grieve, and it would change me forever, but I'd keep  _going_. I'd survive, and even eventually  _thrive_  without them."

It was a foreign way of thinking, to Eliot. He'd been close to losing Quentin so many times, and each experience just made him more and more terrified for what would happen if he ever did. The thought of life  _after_  that was - it was a blank. It was a nothing.

"Well that's good for you, Bambi," Eliot said, choked. "I'm not super jazzed to be contemplating imaginary futures where I lose Quentin, though, so - "

"Will you answer me?" Margo said. Her tone had gone soft, cajoling. "Just. Just answer me - what would you do if you lost him?"

Eliot swallowed hard, and pushed down his anger towards Margo. She was just trying to help. Finally, he sighed and turned to look down into her eyes. "I'm sorry, Margo, but I don't think you really want to know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! You'll notice I've been taking longer between chapters than I did for my last story... sorry about that. Life has been happening. There will likely be only one more part, but potentially two if the scenes run long!


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q and Eliot finally figure out what's going on, and it's worse than they could have imagined. Q is determined to put things right.

**QUENTIN**

Quentin met up with Julia and Alice at the edge of the corridor, and they made their way together to the lavish castle garden. Q had suggested this location because it was one Eliot never really visited. He was doing everything he could think of to trick his mind into focusing on the facts - Eliot wasn't in the garden, he wasn't dying, it wasn't real.

Alice and Julia were both talking to him, just filling him in on details of life back on Earth. Trying to distract him. He listened, focusing as hard as he could on how genuinely nice it was to see these two women who meant so much to him.

When they reached the garden, Alice immediately spread a sheaf of papers out onto a bench and bent over them, making a few last annotations before turning to Quentin. "So. Are you sure he's going to show up?"

Her tone was matter-of-fact, almost brittle, but it didn't bother Q. He appreciated that she was foregoing outward sympathy and just doing what she could to help. He shrugged a little helplessly. "It's like you said, Alice, three times isn't exactly a big sample size. For all we know, it could be over."

God, he hoped so. He hoped so much that he'd never have to watch the light fade from Eliot's eyes again. He snapped his own eyes shut, shaking his head sharply to dispel the image. It was crazy how badly he wanted to go back to Eliot right now. He was aching with it. He took a deep breath and looked up to meet Julia's concerned eyes. "There doesn't seem to be a pattern," Quentin continued finally. "Maybe we just park ourselves here and... you two can distract me telling me about shit back on Earth."

Alice and Julia shared a long look, and then Julia nodded, coming to sit next to Quentin on a low half-wall that surrounded this part of the garden. "Okay, so you remember during your last visit, how Kady was complaining about that group of hedges in Alaska?"

Q nodded, and let Julia's story sweep him away. Alice had come to sit on the other side of him, and oddly, the two women seemed to be acting as an anchor for his mind. He tried to remember himself outside of what was happening, to think about something other than Eliot, and remember that his life existed outside of pain and worry.

They sat out there for over an hour, and while Quentin certainly hadn't forgotten what they were doing there, he had almost started to believe it wasn't going to happen today. Alice was half-way through an adorably animated explanation of her new filing system in the Library when Quentin heard a small sound. He reached out and gripped Alice's arm, hard.

"Quiet."

All three of them stopped talking, straining their ears, and then Q heard it again - a rattling breath, the shifting of limbs across the leaf-strewn paths of the garden. He jumped up, heart pounding in his temples, and moved around the bend in the path.

"He's here," he managed to call back to the others. Julia and Alice darted forward, and Q heard, through the rushing in his ears, Julia let out a muttered curse at the sight.

Q was frozen at the sight of Eliot on the ground, skin pale and shiny with sweat, the pool of blood under him still spreading out and seeping in to the cracks in the cobblestone pathway. He took a shaky step forward, but felt Alice brush past him and kneel by the dying figure first. Her hands were already moving to perform the first step in the magical tracing spell they had rehearsed. As Q watched, Eliot reached out a weak hand and put it on Alice's arm.

"Alice?" he asked, his voice weak and confused. "What - what are you doing here?"

Alice flinched at the touch and at the sound of Eliot's voice, losing her focus on the magic. "Um."

"El," Quentin said, walking forward mechanically and kneeling next to him on the other side. Eliot's attention was immediately riveted on him instead.

"Q... are you okay? What - ow. What happened?"

"It's okay," Q said. It wasn't okay. But what was someone supposed to say in a situation like this? "I'm okay, nobody else is hurt."

"Fuck, I think I'm dying, Q," Eliot said, moving a hand down to his blood-soaked shirt.

"Q, Alice," Julia said, her voice a little urgent. "The  _spell_."

Quentin looked up from Eliot's confused, bleary eyes with great difficulty, to see that Alice was staring down at Eliot in horror as well. "Alice," he echoed. "Let's do this."

"Right," Alice said, and she and Q both raised their hands to start performing the tuts. Quentin resolutely kept his eyes on Alice's hands to match up their movements, ignoring the brush of Eliot's fingers against his leg, the mumbled sound of his name as Eliot tried to get his attention.

The spell took shape as a shimmering gold lattice around Eliot, lying on the ground between them. Q merely had to hold this in place as Alice continued the spell, her hands nearly blurring as she moved them faster and faster. Q felt the spell work on himself as well, the lattice crawling up his own arms, but ignored it, keeping himself focused for as long as Alice needed. Of course, he couldn't quite stop himself from hearing Eliot's voice.

"Q? Q, please, tell me what's going on." He sounded so weak, so scared. Q gritted his teeth and blinked away the tears that were forming in his eyes, his hands still moving in formation after formation.

" _Quentin_ ," Eliot begged, a gasp of pain exploding out of him as he tried to sit up, to force Q to look at him. "Q - please promise me. Promise me you'll be okay, I need - " Eliot broke off, shuddering and slumping back to the ground. Q bit his tongue hard enough to taste blood.

With one final complex flurry of motion from Alice, the spell was complete. Q met her eye, waited for her nod of permission, then dropped his own hands, reaching by instinct for Eliot. "It's okay," he said, a nonsensical echo of his earlier words. What else could he say?

Eliot looked up at him, relief and pain and so much longing in his eyes. "You're okay," Eliot whispered. "Tell everyone I love them, okay? Tell them to take care of each other."

Quentin nodded. His lips and his hands felt numb. "I'll tell them."

"You know how much I - " Eliot said, then coughed, letting out a tiny moan of pain.  
  
"I know," Quentin said. "Just relax, El, you're alright. It's all going to be alright."

It didn't take long after that. As soon as Eliot stopped breathing, Quentin stood up, needing in that moment to be as far away from the body as he could. He couldn't stop looking at him, though, lying there still and cold on the ground.  _Eliot's in Margo's room. Eliot's alive. This is not real_. It didn't really help as much as he wanted it to. He could hear Alice and Julia talking in frantic whispers, and then Julia, a little louder, saying - "but how would they have done that? Without them noticing - "

"It wouldn't have been difficult," Alice said, and Q lifted his eyes from Eliot's body to see her rummaging through her notes. She grabbed a pencil and started scribbling something on a scrap of blank paper. "The circumstances are incredibly basic, as long as they were both in the room..."

"But what about..." Julia said, leaning her head over the same piece of paper and pointing at something. "They linked Q up to it?"

"Yeah, I think..." Alice trailed off, then looked up at Julia suddenly, her eyes wide and round. "Check my math, Jules."

Julia's eyes narrowed and she grabbed the paper from Alice, taking the pencil she was handed absentmindedly. "Oh, fuck."

"I'm right, aren't I?" Alice asked, solemn.

Quentin found his voice, taking a step closer to them. It felt like walking through molasses. "Right about what?" he asked.

Both women looked at him, and were silent. Alice's eyes were red and puffy. Had she been crying while Eliot had... Q hadn't noticed. He hadn't had the space to pay attention to that. "Right about  _what_?" he repeated.

"It's a fragmenting curse," Julia said. She and Alice shared a look of grim-faced understanding.

"Modified," Alice said. "Linking it up with Q somehow, so the fragments are called to him specifically."

"Those monsters," Julia said. "This is some seriously fucked up magic."

"What does it mean?" Q asked. He couldn't look at either of them for a moment, staring back down at Eliot's body. He watched as it slowly started to dissolve, leaving the spot empty and unblemished. He blinked a few times, then looked up at the women again.

The look on Alice's face was terrifying. "Q, I'm. I'm so sorry, I don't even know how to say this."

"Fucking say it, Alice," Q shot back, heart in his throat. He was twitching to get back to Eliot. His eyes slid back over to the spot on the pathway where Eliot's corpse had just been. It was annoying, how much his body wanted to fall the fuck apart right now, even though he knew Eliot was alive and well in Margo's room.

"You're not the one who was cursed," Julia said, gentle and delicate. "It was Eliot."

The cold, hollow feeling of nothingness was taking up residence in Q's chest again. "What the fuck does that mean." It was and wasn't a question. He had to know and he also didn't want to.

"Fen was right," Julia said, stepping close to Alice and gripping her hand, hard. "The spell is draining Eliot of his life. Each... each  _fragment_ , if you will, is a piece of him."

"You're saying - it's - it's real," Q said. His eyes were burning. His skin was prickling. His chest was tight around the words. "You're saying pieces of Eliot have been -  _dying_  right in front of me."

"Years," Alice said quietly. " _Years_ of Eliot have been dying."

"But - but it's happened  _four times_ ," Q said, desperate. "Are you saying four years - "

"Q," Julia said, and Quentin saw that there were tears streaming down her face. "It's not an exact science, and Fillorian time converts weird, you know that, but if we're running the numbers right..."

"And we are," Alice said. "I wish we weren't, but we are. Each fragment that you've seen represents approximately five years of Eliot's life. They're essentially stealing time from his old age."

"But. But. That's - " Q tried to finish the sentence and felt the words catch on the ragged edges of his throat. "No."

"Twenty years," Julia said, staring straight at Quentin. "God, Q, I'm so sorry - "

This was literally worse than the worst thing Q had been imagining. He had known Eliot might be in danger, but somehow he had still taken it for granted that he, Q, was the one who was cursed, that this was about  _him_ , his nightmare, his pain. But Eliot -  _Eliot_  - 

"I need to - " Q said, turning around and stumbling away from them. "I need to get to him."

"We might be able to find a way to stop it from happening again," Alice offered, grabbing at his arm. Q pulled it away and kept moving. Get to Eliot. Touch him. Kiss him. Because he was alive. Unhurt.  _Alive_.

"We won't stop until we've figured this out," Julia called after him. "I'll find Fen and the others, and - and, Q,  _slow down_."

He knew now, rationally, that the fragments could still come when Eliot was with him. There was nothing to suggest otherwise. But that didn't matter. He needed Eliot. He needed him right the fuck  _now._ If he could just be with him, he could hold him here, keep him alive through sheer force of will.

He could hear both Alice and Julia following him through the garden, back indoors and along the cold corridors of the palace. The ramifications of their discovery were fucking staggering, and Q felt bogged down with the weight of them, even as he ran full-tilt through the halls to get back to Eliot. It was really  _Eliot_. Eliot had actually, truthfully, been dying in front of him each of those times. The pained looks, the dying declarations of love - all of it  _real_. All of it stealing Eliot away, bit by bit. If it kept happening, if it kept going for much longer, what the fuck would be left?

He barged in through the door to Margo's room without ceremony, and Eliot was on his feet in time to catch Q in his arms. "It's okay," Eliot said automatically. "I'm fine. We're both fine."

"You're  _not_ ," Q moaned, reaching up and pulling Eliot down to his mouth. He kissed him, deep and desperate, and felt Eliot shiver in response, kissing him back, trying to use the touch to calm him.

"What's going on?" Margo asked, as Alice and Julia rushed into the room. Q stopped kissing Eliot with great reluctance, burying his face in his neck instead. Eliot rubbed a hand up and down Q's back. There was a ringing in Q's ears that almost made Julia's words inaudible, but he heard vaguely as the women explained the situation, heard Margo's pained gasp and Eliot's astonished "holy  _shit_ ," spoken into the top of his head.

Quentin remembered the first of Eliot's fragmented deaths, the one in the library. The way his heart had abandoned him, how he'd felt scooped out, and how the only thing left inside of him had been a desire to die. He hadn't been scared of the feeling then, because he'd lost the ability to feel scared. Now he could feel that same thing curling through him. He wanted to close his eyes right here and now, feeling Eliot's warm, living body against him. He wanted to close his eyes and never open them again.

And because he felt that way, he forced his eyes open instead, and took a step back from Eliot, gripping his arms tight. "We're going to save you."

* * *

**ELIOT**

Alice and Julia's explanation was full of technicalities, but Eliot had no trouble following the basics. He was dying. The longer this happened, the closer he was getting to death. Obviously the thought was terrifying, but he resolutely kept his focus on Q, who was looking at him with black, grim determination on his face. "We're going to fix this," Q said, and Eliot nodded mechanically, still trying to process.

Fen had entered the room not long after, as the rest of them sat down, amid Margo's increasingly creative swearing, and tried to figure out what the hell to do next. They had explained the situation to her, and Eliot had felt tears prick at the back of his eyes as he watched his beautiful ex-wife start to shake at the news.

"We heard back from the delegates we sent to the mermaids," Fen said. She sounded grim. "They were basically told to fuck off."

"We have to go petition them," Q said, somehow both glum and anxious all at once. "We learned that when we were preparing for the negotiations. They're all about ceremony and elaborate requests. I - I have to go and beg for them to put it right."

"Beg them?" Eliot said. Oddly, he hadn't really felt scared upon hearing that he was, in a very real way, being slowly murdered. Q was a mess, he was so scared and heartbroken, and Eliot could do nothing but try to be there for him. He could privately admit that maybe part of this instinct was an avoidance tactic.  _Twenty years_  was too terrifying an idea to wrap his head around, so he wouldn't. "I don't think we should  _beg_ them for _shit_. I think we should fucking  _kill them_."

"They're killing you," Margo snapped. "They're already dead as far as I'm concerned."

"I would like to see them dead too," Fen said, still sounding like her normal sweet self. Eliot felt a swell of love for her.

"I'll rip their heads off with my bare hands - " Margo was saying, when suddenly Quentin stood up from his chair, sending it flying back a few feet. Julia and Eliot both jumped up to go to him but he held his hands up.

"Fucking  _stop_ ," Quentin said, and even though he still sounded terrified, there was a strength behind his frantic fear that actually reassured Eliot, just a little bit. "I don't give a shit about revenge or vengeance or whatever you want to call it. Eliot's  _dying_  and I'll do whatever the fuck those goddamn mermaids want me to do, if they'll fix this."

"And then we kill them," Margo said.

"What good would that do?" Julia said, the voice of reason. "Believe me, I hate them for what they've done, but Q's right. The goal has to be fixing this, not seeking revenge for it."

"That might be true," Fen said thoughtfully. "Killing them would probably feel very satisfying for a moment, but it won't change what's happening."

"The point is," Alice said, her voice quiet but firm enough to cut through everyone. "Eliot is dying. He's being murdered slowly. Every second we sit here could be bringing another fragment along, and each one that shows up is five whole years of Eliot's life."

"Shut up, Alice," Eliot said, but without much heat. He was looking at Q, who was still standing in the center of the room, his fists clenched at his sides. "You're freaking him out."

"I'm way past _freaking out_ ," Q said. "And Alice is right. They're killing you. We need to stop it."

"I don't feel anything," Eliot said. "I mean - if you're right, I've had decades of my life siphoned away from me, but I don't  _feel_  anything."

"You wouldn't," Alice said, apologetic. "The spell is complex, intricate magic. They're taking the energy from the end of your life, from time that doesn't exist yet. They're erasing future years of... well, of  _you_."

"Can they put it back?" Q asked. He sounded as if there was only one answer he would accept.

"I think so," Alice answered. "This is all beyond me. They've taken a base spell and adapted it. There's no reason why the fragments should only appear around  _you_ , Q, but that seems to be the case. You're linked up to it in some way."

"So what's the plan?" Margo said. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not exactly keen to sit on my ass and let these fuckers get away with it." She rolled her eyes at Q's glare. "But your point is taken, Coldwater. Saving Eliot is the priority here. We can save revenge for another day."

* * *

The mermaids were a private people with deeply entrenched social rule and ceremony. The delegates who had been speaking with them had been forced to endure months of negotiations before the mermaids had deigned to visit Castle Whitespire, and given the fact that they'd promptly cursed a member of the high counsel and then fled in the night, they hadn't much enjoyed their visit. The point was, at the end of the day, that a large group of people showing up to their private grove and making demands wasn't exactly likely to yield results.

"It should be just the two of you," Margo had decided, with some regret, and after hugs and kisses all around, Quentin and Eliot had set off. It was a little over a day's journey to the grove, but they had decided to go straight through the night. There was no way of discerning a pattern with the fragments. The longer they waited, the more chances there were for pieces of Eliot to start dying off again. The thought made Eliot shudder. It felt so invasive, knowing that something horrible was happening to him, but having no way to stop it or even  _detect_  it.

Quentin was mostly grim-faced as they began their trek to the grove. He wasn't anxious in the way Eliot might have normally expected. Anxious Quentin usually let off a sort of frenetic, chatty energy, rambling his way in circles through any topic that came to mind. But now, Quentin was quiet and steady in a way that was freaking Eliot out, although he couldn't quite put a pin in why.

He wouldn't tell Eliot how he was feeling, or what he was thinking, exactly, just made a point of insisting on keeping calm when they reached the grove - "we're not going to yell at them, or threaten them, or do anything to make them upset," he said to Eliot, glaring at him. "We're starting with diplomacy."

"And you think diplomacy will be effective  _why_  exactly?" Eliot countered. "We've had actual diplomats trying to reason with them from the very beginning of all of this, and it's done nothing."

"They wanted to teach me a lesson," Q replied. They were holding hands as they walked through the forest, and the calm, even tone of Q's voice was contrasted to the way his hand occasionally tightened around Eliot's hard enough to hurt. "If I tell them they've succeeded, maybe they'll be willing to help."

"And what lesson was that, exactly?" Eliot asked, trying to match Q's even tone. He felt an indecisive sort of fury, at the mermaids for what they'd done, at himself for being unable to sooth Q's pain, and somehow at Quentin himself, for being so in love with him that Eliot's distress became his own so easily.

Q shrugged his shoulders, and for a long moment Eliot thought he wasn't going to answer his question. "The lesson that happiness is finite, I guess. That we have to hold on to what little we're given and do whatever we can to keep it."

There was nothing so very scary about these words, but Eliot felt his heart thump a little faster in his chest all the same. He squeezed Quentin's hand and changed the subject as they continued on towards their destination.

* * *

Despite Eliot's fervent hopes, the fragmenting happened twice more on the way to the mermaid's grove. Both times, Eliot had held Quentin close to him while Q tried to comfort the dying fragment. Both times, Eliot knew a piece of his own life was being drained away from him, but felt only anguish for Quentin's sake.

The last time, just a half day's journey from their destination, had been particularly wretched. The fragment had taken a long time to die. It had babbled, delirious with pain, at Quentin, asking for Margo, asking to be held, shuddering through dying declarations of love and sorrow and devotion until Eliot, the  _real_  Eliot, felt himself lightheaded with the pain of watching his own fucking deathbed confessional. Quentin, at some point, had gone quiet, the staggered words of comfort fading away to little gasps of torment as he brushed his hands through the fragment's hair, along its face, waiting for the breathing to finally stop. When it did, Quentin went limp, falling back into Eliot's solid, warm chest.

"Q, it's over. It's okay, we're - we're going to fix this," Eliot said.  _Six times_ , he couldn't help thinking.  _That's thirty years_. He knew what the haunted look in Q's eyes meant. The trauma of watching Eliot die right in front of him was bad enough, but the knowledge that three full decades of their future together had been stolen... Eliot was, for the first time in his life, not at all grateful at the thought of dying first. He found himself thinking that he'd suffer through losing Q early, if it meant Q would never have to.

Quentin was a silent, unresponsive weight against Eliot's chest. He was breathing, his eyes were open, unblinking, watching the fragment's corpse until it eventually dissolved in front of their eyes. He just kept staring.

"Quentin," Eliot said, rubbing a hand up and down his arms. "Q, we should stand up, we should keep moving."

No response.

" _Q_." A little sharper.

No response.

Eliot wasn't sure if he'd describe it as catatonic. Q was clearly hearing him, at least. Eventually he stood up and took Eliot's outstretched hand, and they kept walking through the woods towards their destination. But he wasn't speaking. Eliot tried to keep himself calm, keeping up a steady stream of inconsequential words, rubbing his hands along Q's arms as they walked, trying to reassure him with his living, vibrant presence. But after about an hour of silence from Quentin, Eliot stopped, stepping in front of Q on the path and gripping both of his shoulders in his hands.

"Okay, Quentin, I'm sorry, but you're scaring the shit out of me. Please say something."

Q blinked, looked at him, then looked down, but he didn't answer.

"Please," Eliot said. "Just talk to me, just - Q, I'm freaking out here, I don't know what I'm supposed to do to help you."

"You can't," Q said. His voice was hoarse, like he'd been screaming, even though Eliot knew he hadn't been. "I can't."

"Quentin..."

"I can't watch it again. I mean it, El, I'd rather die."

"Don't say that," Eliot snapped, pulling Q into his arms, holding him tight. "You  _don't_ mean it."

"I do. I can't. It'll kill me, Eliot. It's killing  _you_ , and I'm just. I'm useless. I can't do anything."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Eliot said. He felt more helpless than he ever had in his life.

Quentin tilted his face up and kissed Eliot, but it wasn't a desperate kiss. It was frighteningly calm, measured, almost like Quentin was trying to reassure Eliot, instead of the other way around. Eliot wasn't sure why, but something about it terrified him down to his core.

"Q," Eliot said, his breath catching in his throat, as Q pulled away.

"I'm going to fix this," Quentin said simply. "I'm going to fix this or die trying." Quentin grabbed his hand and tugged Eliot forward so they could continue walking. Eliot, his heart in his throat, remembered Margo's concerned words back at Whitespire.  _Co-dependent_ , she'd said. Maybe she had a point.

* * *

Eliot had expected that maybe the mermaids would be difficult to find, but there was one waiting for them the second they'd entered the grove. She didn't even wait for them to finish bowing and requesting an audience with the Princess Glissanda. She simply disappeared under the water, leaving the two of them alone in the clearing.

"Remember, we're staying calm," Q reminded him, and Eliot gave a small nod. It didn't take long before the Princess Glissanda appeared, rising herself up out of the water with what Eliot thought was unnecessary dramatics. Aria, her personal attendant, was with her as well.

"Eliot Waugh. Quentin Coldwater. What a pleasant surprise to see you both here."

Eliot twitched and ground his teeth. Q grabbed his wrist, hard. "Princess Glissanda," he said, bowing his head properly. "I should think you've already realized why we've come?"

"And why should you think that?" Glissanda said, batting her eyelashes a few times. "I'm a busy person, Quentin, I don't have time to track all of my acquaintances' comings and goings."

"Princess," Eliot said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "You placed a curse on us, and we're here looking to rectify the misunderstanding."

Q looked at him sharply, and Eliot un-clenched his jaw with terrible effort. Glissanda had robbed him of his old age, had robbed Q of a long and happy life with the man he loved. Standing in front of her now, he felt more rage than he knew what to do with. Quentin seemed calm, though. Maybe a little wound up, but his voice was still even, his expression blank, as he took over for Eliot and continued.

"At this time, thirty years of Eliot's life have been torn away from him. I'm here to ask for your mercy."

"Are you sure you don't seek retribution?" It was Aria. Glissanda had a pleasant enough expression on her face, but Aria seemed to be having just as much trouble with pretense as Eliot was. "How can we trust that you don't have people waiting in the woods to attack us unless we do what you say?"

"Aria, please," Glissanda said, giving her a glare over her shoulder. "This is my concern." She turned back to Q and Eliot. Ignoring Eliot, she kept her gaze focused on Quentin. "My dear friend here may have a point, however indelicately she expresses it. How can I be sure of your good intentions in coming to see me here?"

"I'm not looking for revenge," Q said. And, to Eliot's astonishment, he got down on his knees, leaning closer to the mermaids in the water. "I just want you to fix this. Make him whole again. I'll give you whatever you want."

" _Quentin_ ," Eliot said. His throat was constricted past the point of pain.

Glissanda looked at him, her beautiful eyes narrowed in thought. "So you have felt it, then. The pain of loss. The contemplation of true loneliness."

"You have no fucking  _idea_ ," Eliot answered for him. "You don't know what he's been through - even before all this bullshit, you have no  _concept_  of what he's suffered."

"Eliot," Q said, sounding almost impatient. "I don't need you to defend me from her."

"Your love for each other is clear," Glissanda said, nodding in obvious approbation. "But your disrespect is unappreciated. Your people have caused mine enough pain to justify a few decades of retribution, don't you think?"

"Fine," Q said, his voice tight. "You need retribution for what happened to you, you can have  _me_ , not Eliot."

"Woah, woah, Quentin,  _stop_. That's not a goddamn option."

"Of course it is," Q said, whirling on Eliot in sudden agony, still down on his knees. "Please, El, I  _can't_  - "

"This little performance is mildly amusing," Glissanda cut in, as Eliot felt his heart crack through the center. "But I refuse your request, Quentin Coldwater."

"But - " Q started.

" _Good,"_ Eliot said at the same time. "None of that self-sacrificing bullshit, Q, you do  _not_  get to pull that with me."

"Please," Q said, ignoring Eliot and staring at Glissanda with a desperate gleam in his eyes. "Please fix him. You can have whatever you want."

Glissanda narrowed her eyes at him, and Eliot took a shaky step forward, leaning over to tug on Q's arm. "Q, stand up. Let's just go."

"You wanted me to feel pain?" Q continued, jerking his arm out of Eliot's grasp. "I've lost the love of my life more than any one person should be forced to endure. I had to watch a monster walk around in his body for months. I had to lose him to old age, and to possession, and now  _this_." His tone became a hiss of anger, and Eliot took comfort in the spark of defiance mixed in with Q's despair.

Eliot wanted to say something, to interrupt Q and get that horribly contemplative look off of Glissanda's face. She was studying him very carefully now, as Q continued. "I love him more than I love my own life. And I  _do_  love my own life, Princess. I don't relish the idea of losing it. But I'd rather that than lose him again. I'm fucking begging you."

There was a long silence. Behind Glissanda, the largely silent Aria bobbed in the water, looking more bored than anything else. Finally, Glissanda's head tilted just slightly, and then she gave a nod to herself, coming to a decision.

"I will end the curse," Glissanda said, with a graceful bow of her head. "Your lesson appears to be learned."

Q let out a breath, and Eliot blinked, startled. "That's it?"

She nodded again. "I am not without reason."

"But the thirty years," Quentin said, undeterred. "You stop it now, that's still six fragments of him that you stole. You have to  _give it back_."

"Why should I?" Glissanda asked, sounding genuinely confused.

The look of desperation on Q's face morphed, tightened into a blazing fury. "Because I'll fucking kill you if you don't."

Eliot flinched, grabbing at Q. "Quentin, honey, maybe - "

" _No_."

Glissanda actually laughed. "I'd love to see you try, Quentin Coldwater. And even if you succeeded, what good would it do you? Your Eliot still has a good... what, Fifteen? Twenty years left? Can you not accept that time for the gift that it is?"

"Take the thirty years from me instead, then. That should be punishment enough for you," Q said.

" _Don't_ ," Eliot shot back, glaring at Glissanda. "Don't listen to him."

"Well this has gone from mildly amusing to irritatingly predictable," Aria grumbled from behind Glissanda. "We get it, you're both the self-sacrificing type. You'd die for each other. Very fucking romantic."

Glissanda, however, appeared to be intrigued. "I suppose I could - "

"No  _fucking_  way," Eliot shouted, dropping to his knees beside Q so he could look him in the eye. "Q,  _don't_."

Q just looked at him, shaking his head a little sadly. "What choice do I have?"

"One fragment," Glissanda's voice rang out clear and precise, before Eliot could respond to that heartbreaking, infuriating statement. Both of them snapped their heads around to stare at her.

"What?" Q said.

"I will return Eliot's six fragments of life," Glissanda said, "in exchange for just one fragment of your own, Quentin."

"Deal," Q said immediately.

"Now hold on," Eliot said, panicked.

"I'll give you two a moment to discuss it," Glissanda said, looking amused. Q stood, pulling on Eliot until he followed. They walked away from the grove, behind a stand of nearby trees. They were still close enough to the river that Eliot wondered if they really had privacy, but at the moment he had bigger things to be worried about.

"This is insane, Q."

"Is it?"

"I'm not going to let you hand over five years of your life, I  _can't_  let you - "

"Eliot, for fuck's sake, be serious about this for a second. Do the math. I've watched you die six times in the last four days. That's  _thirty years_. This trade is worth it, no matter which way you look at it." The look of devastation, of blank horror, that had settled over Quentin over the last couple of days had shifted. There was determination there now, and a powerful, painful hope.

"How do we know she's telling the truth?" Eliot tried, feeling achy and uncertain. "I feel perfectly fine, I don't feel weak or... or thirty years closer to the grave or anything. It's not aging me prematurely. We could try and find another way. Maybe we just let it go, maybe we just go  _home_."

"Fuck that." Q turned back towards the river, and made to start walking back towards the waiting mermaids. Eliot grabbed his arm, and turned him back around so they were facing each other. He wasn't really sure what to say. He knew he was being irrational, knew that what Q was saying made sense, but the whole thing was just too insane. How could he sit back and let Q be hurt? It wasn't in him. It was antithetical to his very soul. He opened his mouth to say just that, but Q spoke first, his tone flat and stern.

"You died, Eliot."

"I know that, Q," Eliot said, trying for patience. "I understand how awful this whole thing has been, but I can't - "

"No, you  _died_. I turned around to grab another tile and you were sitting on your chair. Your eyes were open, but you were just - gone. You were  _dead_  and I was alone. El, you were seventy-six years old. I outlived you by more than a decade, and I don't want to do that again. Please don't make me live half my life without you."

It was Quentin's tone, more than his words, that broke Eliot's resolve. He didn't sound frantic. He didn't stammer. He was  _sure_ , and Eliot... trusted him. He didn't have an argument good enough to fight with, anyway. Eliot knew what losing Q would do to him, and he had come to believe Q when he said he felt just the same. Which meant that in the end, giving in was the best way to save Quentin from pain. That was all he'd ever wanted to do.

Taking a fortifying deep breath of fresh Fillorian air, Eliot gave a shaky nod. Q let out an explosive breath of relief, coming forward and throwing his arms around him. " _Thank you_."

Eliot couldn't speak for a moment, he just held Q to him as tightly as he could, willing his limbs to stop trembling. "You're too much sometimes, you know that?" he said as Q pulled out of the hug. "I don't know what the hell to do with you, Quentin."

Q just smiled at him, eyes shining, and stretched up on his toes to kiss Eliot stupid.

Eliot just. Melted. Always. God, he was so in love it was just shy of painful. Q pulled back and smiled fondly at Eliot when he made an embarrassing bereft sort of noise and tried to chase Q's lips with his own. Q gripped Eliot's hand tightly, turning them both back towards the waiting mermaids by the river. "Let's get this over with."

* * *

It was pretty anti-climactic, at the end of the day. The mermaids performed some sort of a ritual, a low, melodic chant, and then they opened their eyes and nodded at Eliot and Q, who had been told to stand at the edge of the water, facing their erstwhile tormentors.

"Is that it?" Q asked.

"Did you feel anything?" Eliot asked him anxiously.

"Maybe. Just a slight shiver of something. But I was looking for it, so... it can't been that noticeable, or we would have felt it the last time."

"The deed is done," Glissanda said. "Your stolen years have been returned to you." She nodded gracefully at Eliot, who managed to jerk his head back in reply. He hoped it was a gracious enough response. He couldn't look at her without feeling his blood boil. This malevolent monster had stolen five years of Quentin Coldwater from him - from the  _world_  - and now he was expected to turn around and walk away from her, leave her alive and at peace.

"El, it's okay," Q said, rubbing a hand up his arm. Eliot looked down at him. Q was - he was  _glowing_  with relief. "It's all okay now."

"I don't..." Eliot choked. "You scare the hell out of me, Q." He dipped his head to kiss him, letting the touch grant him comfort. His love for Quentin was the biggest, most important part of who he was. He'd accepted that long ago. But to feel that degree of love and devotion in return? He'd never stop being awed and terrified by it.

"Are we free to leave?" Quentin asked Glissanda and Aria, as he pulled back from Eliot.

"We could hardly stop you," Aria said, raising a sardonic brow.

"I wish you both long life," Glissanda said, and Quentin squeezed Eliot's shoulder and turned him away from the river before could reply.

" _Long life_ ," Eliot hissed under his breath. "Fucking bitch."

"It's just a couple of years of old age, El," Q said. "It's the ones where I'd be all arthritic and probably have dementia anyway."

"You didn't have dementia the last time around. You would have mentioned it."

"Unless I forgot," Q pointed out, smiling wickedly. He slid his arm around Eliot's waist and steered him away from the grove and back along the path towards home.

"Don't get smart with me," Eliot said. "I'm fucking traumatized."

"I think the opium in the air is a cure for Alzheimer's anyway," Q said sagely, and Eliot felt his lips twitch upwards involuntarily.

"You think you're funny, don't you?"

"So do you," Q replied, leaning up and kissing Eliot on the cheek, even as they kept walking away from the river. He was smiling, genuinely relaxed and happy for the first time since all of this had started, and despite Eliot's own grief, the sight was a real balm to his soul. He felt guilty as all hell. A part of him wanted to run back to the mermaids and tell them to put it back. What business did he have, allowing Q to trade precious years of his own life away? But Q was his partner, his soulmate. He had to trust him, had to think of their needs together and apart, not just what his own heart wanted.

"You're relieved," Eliot said at one point, after they'd been walking comfortably through the woods for a few hours.

Q looked up at him, startled. "Obviously."

"That's not what I mean," Eliot said. He was trying to find a way to phrase this correctly. He didn't want to hurt Q's feelings, or be accusatory, but it was something he had to say. "You would have given much more to save me, I know that," Eliot said. "But you're  _relieved_ , knowing you'll die five years sooner than you would have otherwise."

Q looked away from him, and down at his feet, a little guilty. "I don't know that I would it put it like that."

"Was it so awful?" Eliot asked him, soft. "After I was gone? You had Ted and the grandkids."

Quentin shrugged, a sad smile playing across his lips at the thought of their erstwhile family. "I did. And I loved them very much. But El, I had to wake up alone every morning."

It was so simple, so basic, but Eliot didn't need anything more than that to understand. He felt that twinge of unease in his gut again, though, remembering Margo's concern. It couldn't be healthy for Q to be thinking this way. And it couldn't be healthy that Eliot felt just the same.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

They had just stopped to make camp half way home from the river, when it occurred to Quentin that there was still one part of this nightmare left. Before they could even sit down to take a breather before starting their fire, Q heard a rustle in the brush just a few yards away, and somehow, instinctively, he knew exactly what it was.

"Oh, fuck," he said eloquently, looking over to where the brush was moving.

"What?" Eliot said. He'd noticed the noise too, but he clearly hadn't put together what Q already had. He moved to stand in front of Q, in between him and the potential threat. "What's - "

But the bushes had parted, and a figure had broken through. Pale, stumbling, covered in blood. " _El_?" it asked, before collapsing to the ground with an anguished moan. "El, it  _hurts_ , it..."

Eliot sucked in a pained gasp, and Quentin, his stomach turning over at the sight of his own dying body, grabbed at Eliot's arm, hard. "Eliot, just. Don't. Just look at me, okay? You don't have to - "

"But it's  _you_ ," Eliot breathed, and like he couldn't help himself, he pulled away from Q and walked  _towards_  Q, walked towards the fragment that was shuddering out its last breaths, blood leaking from a familiar deep gash on his chest and arm - the injury he'd sustained in his fight with the Beast and Niffin Alice.

Eliot reached the figure crumpled on the forest floor, and dropped like a lead weight next to it.

Quentin, the living, healthy Quentin standing just a few feet away, watched helplessly as Eliot reached forward and gathered the dying fragment into his arms. "It's okay, baby, I'm here," Eliot whispered, anguished.

" _El_ , I'm sorry," the fragment said. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to die, I... I'd never leave you - " it broke off, coughing.

Eliot wasn't facing him, so Quentin couldn't see the look on his face. He was grateful for it, but he could still hear the waver in his voice as he leaned forward and kissed the fragment on the forehead. "I know that. I know. It's okay, Q, I'll be okay. I promise."

"Promise?" the fragment echoed weakly. Eliot nodded, and even from behind, Quentin could see how tightly he was clenching his jaw.

Quentin wanted to go forward and place a hand on Eliot's shoulder, remind him that he was here, and alive, and whole, but he felt rooted to the spot. The fragment took a few more stuttering breaths, then lifted a hand and brushed fingers gently over Eliot's cheek. That thing, that thing that looked like Quentin, that was somehow a  _part_  of him, was looking at Eliot was such naked devotion in its - his - eyes, that Quentin felt heat rush up into his face, felt like he was intruding on a private moment. Q heard a quiet noise of distress from Eliot, and swayed on the spot. "Q, just - just close your eyes, okay? You can rest now."

It didn't take long, but it felt like forever. Quentin's eyes welled up with tears as he watched Eliot cradle the fragment to his chest. The fragment was fighting for every breath, maintaining eye-contact with Eliot, whose own breath was coming out in wavering little gasps. Q heard the expulsion of air - relief mixed with grief - from Eliot when the figure in his arms finally went still. Eliot carefully laid the corpse on the ground and stared at it for a long, numb, moment. Then he stood, and turned around to look at Quentin. A second passed. Then another. And then something in Eliot's expression shattered.

_"Fuck_ ," he said, wild, and he rushed forward to grab at Q. He pulled them together and Q found himself being thoroughly kissed before he'd had a chance to process it. Eliot walked him backwards and had him back against a tree - Q found his footing on a root that actually lifted him a few inches, all the better to give as good as he got. He pressed his tongue into Eliot's mouth and brought a hand up to grip hard into his hair as Eliot pressed him roughly into the tree, leaning his whole weight against Q, trapping him between the bark and the line of his body. "Jesus  _God_ , Q, I'm so fucking - I'm  _sorry_ ," Eliot gasped out when he finally pulled away to breathe. He hadn't fully separated their mouths, and his words came out right against Q's lips. "Six times. Six fucking - I fucking  _can't -_ how did you -  _how_  - " He let out a little groan of frustration at his lack of coherence and then gave up, kissing Quentin again with bruising strength.

It took a while to calm Eliot down, but Q managed it, shifting the kiss gradually into something gentler, cradling Eliot's face between his hands and brushing his thumb along the line of his jaw. He felt the lines of tension in Eliot slowly relax, felt the urgent press of his body become a languorous, melting, near-swoon. Q knew he was the only thing keeping Eliot upright, and also that the tree was the only thing keeping  _him_  upright. Q separated their lips and shoved his face into the crook of Eliot's neck, breathing deep.

"It's over," he said, muffled in Eliot's shirt. "It's all over now, El." He was relieved, in a sick sort of way, at this proof that the mermaids had honored their deal.

"I'm sorry," Eliot repeated, choking back on sobs against Q's ear. "You were right, I couldn't really understand what it was like."

"I guess you really love me, huh?" Q said, going for lighthearted and falling woefully short. Still, Eliot let out a sound somewhat akin to a laugh.

"I guess I really do."

Q shifted so he could rest his chin on Eliot's shoulder and look behind him. The fragment had vanished. He ran his hands up and down Eliot's back in a soothing pattern. "It's gone. We're good, it's finally done."

"You're going to think I'm crazy but can we - can we please find somewhere else to camp?"

Q didn't think that was crazy at all. He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to go into that aisle of the library again, or that corner of the garden, or -

"Shit, Eliot, do you think we could maybe get a different room in the castle?"

Eliot pulled away from him to meet Quentin's eyes, keeping their bodies close. "The second time, right?"

Quentin nodded. "You wished we had more time," he said, remembering that fragment's final words. "You always told me you loved me. Every time, El."

Eliot did a full-body shudder, his eyes snapping shut. "Yes. New room. Maybe we can get a bigger one, if we play the sympathy card with Margo."

"Since when has the sympathy card ever worked on her? Maybe Fen, though."

Eliot tapped a finger to his nose. "Very clever, Q. You're really coming into your own as a politician."

Eliot kept up a stream of seemingly relaxed banter with Q as they resumed their homeward march, looking for another suitable place to bank down for the night, a place that wouldn't carry the memory of Quentin gasping out his last breaths. Q studied his face as they walked. He seemed mostly okay, but he had gripped Q's hand in his own and was holding it with nearly painful strength. Q wasn't complaining, though. The tangle of their fingers felt like the only thing anchoring him to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be one more chapter - a much shorter epilogue. Thank you so much for your patience everyone!


	4. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your support! I have a few other vague ideas for cliches and tropes to explore through this theme of magically convenient curses, but I'd love to gauge people's interest level. Also, if anyone has any ideas of their own for curses, I'd love to hear your recommendations!

**ELIOT**

"I think maybe we need to talk to someone," Eliot said. They were in their new bedroom, down a separate corridor, far away from any of the spots that Q still refused to visit, spots where he'd never be able to go without seeing the spread of blood and the ashen look of shock and pain on Eliot's face.

"Hm?" Q said, clearly distracted. He was unpacking some of his clothes into a trunk in the corner of the room.

"Like. A therapist. Probably on Earth, I'm not sure I trust the Fillorian psychiatric industry."

Q turned around, startled, one of his shirts dropping limply from his hands. "El, I have a therapist, you know that."

"Yeah. I think  _we_  should. Um. Talk to someone."

"Like couple's counseling?" Q asked, sounding somewhat amused.

"Yes," Eliot said. He wasn't in a teasing mood, truth be told. Quentin blinked at him, and his faced took on an expression of confusion, mixed with a touch of hurt.

"You think we need... but... why?"

"It's nothing like that," Eliot rushed to assure Quentin. Almost by instinct, he found himself hurrying to Q's side, so he could touch him. "I love you, and we're - I mean, we're  _good,_ baby, we're so good. Sometimes I think maybe  _too_ good."

Quentin let out a little laugh at that. "So... we're so happy, so in love, that you think we need to seek professional help?"

Eliot smiled wide and kissed Q on the nose, but he forced himself to continue anyway. "That's not exactly what I mean. The last year and a half have been the happiest of my life. You know that, right?"

Q nodded, a little uncertain. "For me too."

"But this last week has been... well, you know."

Q was looking at him, face scrunched up in confusion. "What are you getting at?"

"Look, we live unpredictable, crazy lives. It's not something I like to think about, but there's always the possibility..." he trailed off, seeing the wariness in Q's eyes. He tipped Q's face up by tapping under his chin, and pressed a quick kiss to his lips, steadying himself. "I'm fine, and we figured out how to deal with this latest catastrophe. But someday something might happen, and I might - "

Q jerked away from him, hard. "I don't want to talk about this."

"Quentin - "

"Please. Not. Not right now, I can't."

"Q, honey, just... just think about it, okay? This isn't just about you, it's me too. Do you remember..." Eliot hesitated, wondering if what he was about to say was manipulative, but continued on. "When you got cursed, when you almost died, back on Earth? I - I told you that when I saw you lying there, I thought you were dying and I wanted to die with you."

Q snapped his eyes up to meet Eliot's, but didn't respond. Eliot continued, his voice a little shaky with memory. "I  _meant_  it. I wasn't being hyperbolic. I meant it then, and I mean it now. Q, you're my whole life, and I don't mean that in a romantic sense, I mean it in a scary, unhealthy way, and I think it's the same for you, with me."

"So we're bad for each other," Q said, his voice that scary blank that meant he was closing down on emotions too strong to share.

"No," Eliot said immediately. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."

"So what are you - "

"If you die, Q, I don't want to  _want_   _to die._ Does that make sense? If something happened to you right now, I'd want to... I'd want to end. Cease to exist. I have absolutely no interest in seeing what life looks like without you."

"But you...  _want_  to want to live on?"

"I want  _you_  to want that too, if I die before  _you_."

Q's mouth turned down into a frown, and he stepped back to Eliot, cupping his face between his hands. "I don't know if I can make you that kind of a promise."

"Q..."

"I lived a full life, Eliot. I had... I had a son, and grand-kids, and a great-granddaughter. I lost Arielle, and I survived it. I lost  _you_ , and I survived it. I know what it takes, and I just... I can't find it in myself to want to do that again. I don't want to live if you're not here, and. Um. Maybe you're right, maybe that's fucked up and unhealthy, but it's how I feel."

Eliot blinked a few times, trying to keep the tears in. He turned his face into Q's palm for a moment, then lifted his own hands and removed Quentin's from his face, keeping them gripped tight and pulling them to his chest. "Q, you probably won't have to go through it again. We'll both probably live to be old men. I swear to you, I will fight to the ends of the earth to stay with you, and I  _know_  how hard you fight every day to stay with me."

"Why do I sense a 'but'?"

" _But_ , we both deserve full lives. Together, preferably, but if that's not possible, then we deserve to find  _peace_. If one of us dies, I don't want our friends to lose both of us all at once, you know?"

"I can't make myself love you less, El," Q said, shrugging his shoulders.

"I'd never ask you to," Eliot said. "All I'm saying is that maybe we find someone to talk to. Just... to see if we can find healthier ways to... to handle the stress and fear of our lives."

Eliot could tell Quentin was unconvinced, but eventually he gave a little nod, then tilted his head forward to rest on Eliot's chest. "Okay. If you think it will help, I'm not going to say no."

"I think maybe some time on Earth would be good for both of us right now, anyway," Eliot said. "You mentioned taking a trip."

Q huffed out a laugh. "Finding a therapist on Earth wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but yeah, a trip does sound good."

Eliot put his hands on Q's shoulders and separated them slightly so he could look into Q's eyes. "We'll do other stuff too, I promise," he said, biting the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling too widely. Q narrowed his eyes at Eliot's expression, but thankfully didn't ask.

* * *

Fen and Eliot had been married for quite a while before Eliot had decided to give her a ring. It was a family heirloom, something given to him by his great-uncle (incidentally, the only member of his whole family who hadn't tried to beat the queer out of him, one way or another). His great-uncle had gotten it from  _his_ grandmother, and etc. etc... frankly, Eliot wasn't really sure of the whole lineage. All he knew was that it was a sapphire, and the setting was gorgeous, and he loved that ring. It had been just big enough for his pinky finger, and one day, on something of a whim, he'd decided that he should give a piece of jewelry to his wife. Fen had been touched and delighted, and had worn it from that day forward.

When they'd divorced, Eliot hadn't even considered asking for the ring back. One day, without fanfare, he noticed that Fen had quietly stopped wearing it. And now...

"Hey, Fen?"

"Eliot! I thought you and Q were going to Earth today."

"We are," Eliot said, scratching at the back of his neck. He hadn't expected to be nervous about this. "I just had to ask you something real quick."

Fen opened the door wider and Eliot stepped in to the chamber. It was mid-morning, and Eliot had been lucky to discover Fen alone in their room; both Margo and Josh were already well in to their important days.

"What did you want to ask?"

Eliot paused, and swallowed hard. He wasn't nervous to tell Fen. He wasn't nervous to ask this of her. But something about saying the words out loud to  _anyone_ , anyone other than Q, made him feel incredibly vulnerable. "Fen, Q and I are... I was thinking about..." he coughed, frustrated with himself.

Fen's eyes widened. A smile broke slowly across her face, and she came towards him, throwing her arms around him and kissing him on the cheek. "No problem, Eliot, I'll be right back." And before he could say anything else, Fen had darted through the room and into one of the deeper chambers. She returned in moments, pinching the sapphire ring triumphantly between her fingers. "Oh, I  _knew_  it. Have you asked him yet? How are you going to do it?"

Eliot gaped at her. "How in the hell did you..."

"I'm right, aren't I?"

Eliot took the ring from her, then leaned down to kiss her. "You're unbelievable. You were the best wife anyone could have asked for, you know that?"

"And you're going to be an incredible husband, Eliot."

Eliot wasn't sure yet how he was going to ask. Q didn't like big, elaborate gestures, but inevitably their wedding ceremony would be one. That meant the proposal should be something intimate and private. They had scheduled themselves three weeks on Earth, to get away from Fillory for a bit, spend some time with Julia and their other friends there, and - at Eliot's insistent, gentle coaxing, find a magician who had chosen to go in to therapy as a career, someone they could genuinely share their life experience with, who had a hope of understanding and being able to help.

And somewhere in there, Eliot knew, he'd find a moment. It would be quiet, and it would feel right, and he would ask. He was excited about it, but not nervous. So many things about his future were uncertain, but the knowledge that he would spend the rest of his life with Quentin Coldwater... that was a rock-solid certainty that nothing could change.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a lot shorter, just a little epilogue to finish things off. Thank you again for reading!


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